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Monarch Waystation
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My yard is a rest stop. Every September, for a couple of weeks, the monarchs come
through Kansas on their way south to Mexico, and some of them stop in my
backyard to drink from the asters and the goldenrod and the last of the zinnias,
and to sleep in the big hackberry tree. I've been keeping milkweed for them for
nine years now, and raising a few dozen every summer from eggs, and I made this
page to share what I've learned and to keep my count for this fall's migration,
which is happening right now as I type this.
If you have a corner of yard, some sun, and a little patience, you can do this too. It is one of the gentlest hobbies I know of. |
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My Count ·
School Visits
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The life cycle: about a month, start to finish
The egg. A female monarch lays her eggs one at a time, almost always on the underside of a milkweed leaf. The egg is about the size of a pinhead, cream-colored, shaped like a tiny ridged football. Look closely and you can see the ridges with a hand lens. It hatches in about three to five days, depending on how warm it is. The caterpillar (larva). The caterpillar eats its own eggshell first, then starts on the milkweed, and that's all it will ever eat. It grows through five stages, called instars, shedding its skin between each one because the skin doesn't stretch. A newly hatched first instar is a couple of millimeters long and sort of grayish; by the fifth instar, about ten days to two weeks later, it's a fat striped yellow, black and white caterpillar as long as your little finger, with a pair of black filaments at each end. It eats an astonishing amount in those last days. You can hear them chewing at night in a quiet room. The chrysalis (pupa). When it's done eating, the caterpillar wanders off the plant, finds a spot (the top of the cage, a stem, the underside of a windowsill), spins a little silk button, hangs from it upside down in a "J" shape for a day or so, and then splits its skin one last time. What's underneath is the chrysalis: a smooth jade-green case with a row of gold dots near the top that looks like something made by a jeweler. It hangs there for about ten days to two weeks. Near the end it turns transparent and you can see the orange and black wings folded up inside. The butterfly. The chrysalis splits and the butterfly crawls out with its wings crumpled and its abdomen fat with fluid, and pumps the fluid into the wings over the next hour or so until they're full size. Then it has to hang and let them dry and harden for a few hours before it can fly. Don't touch it during this time. When it's ready, it opens and closes its wings a few times and goes. Egg to adult, then, is about a month in warm weather. A summer monarch lives another two to five weeks as a butterfly. The ones born at the end of summer, though, are different; see the migration below. Milkweed: the only thing they eat This is the one fact to take away: monarch caterpillars eat milkweed and nothing else. No milkweed, no monarchs. Adults will drink nectar from all kinds of flowers, but the female will only lay her eggs on milkweed, because that's all the babies can eat. The milky sap is full of compounds that make the caterpillars, and later the butterflies, taste terrible to birds, which is why a bird that's tried one monarch leaves the rest alone. The milkweeds I grow, all of them native here:
And please: no insecticides. Not on the milkweed, not near it. Whatever kills the aphids kills the caterpillars. Raising them indoors in mesh cages Out in the yard, most monarch eggs don't make it; ants, spiders, wasps, stink bugs and the weather get the great majority. So every summer I bring some inside.
Tagging In the fall, I tag. There's a monarch tagging program run out of the University of Kansas in Lawrence that sends volunteers sheets of tiny round adhesive tags, each with its own number. You hold the butterfly gently with its wings closed, and press the tag onto the big cell in the middle of the underside of the hind wing. It weighs next to nothing and doesn't bother them. Then you write down the number, the date, whether it's male or female, and whether you raised it or caught it wild, and mail the sheet in at the end of the season. The point is that when a tagged monarch is found, in Texas, or in Mexico at the wintering grounds, or on somebody's windshield in Oklahoma, the number tells them where and when it started. That's how it's been worked out how far they go and how fast. The odds of any one of mine being recovered are small, but somebody's are, and it's a little thrill every fall to think about it. How to tell male from female, since the tag sheet asks: a male has a small black spot on a vein in the middle of each hind wing (a scent gland) and thinner black lines; a female has no spots and thicker, darker veins. Once you see it you can't un-see it. The migration, September 1999
Here's the part that still amazes me after nine years. The monarchs that come out of the chrysalis in late August and September are not like the summer ones. Instead of mating and living a few weeks, they hold off on all that and start flying south, and they keep going, some of them well over two thousand miles, to a handful of mountain forests in central Mexico where they cluster on the fir trees by the millions and wait out the winter. In spring they start north again, lay eggs in Texas and thereabouts, and die; it's their children and grandchildren that reach Kansas again by summer. So the ones flying over my house right now have never been to Mexico, and no one alive to show them the way. They just go. For us in eastern Kansas that means a couple of weeks in the middle of September when, on a good day with a light north wind, you look up and they're just drifting over, one every minute or so, all heading the same way, southwest. Toward evening they come down to feed and to roost. They roost in the same hackberry tree in my yard every year, dozens of them hanging in clusters like dead leaves until the sun warms them in the morning. This year the first ones came through on September 8, the big days were the 16th, 17th and 20th, and it's tapering off now, though I saw eleven go over this morning (the 26th). Cold front on the 15th, then a warm still day after: that's what brings them down in numbers. My count I sit on the back step from about 5:30 to 6:30 in the evening with a cup of tea and a click counter and count every monarch I see in the yard, feeding or flying over. It's not science, it's one person on a step, but I've done it the same way every fall since 1993 and it's interesting to compare. "Roost" is my count of the ones in the hackberry at dusk, which I do with binoculars and probably under-count.
I'll keep counting until I go three evenings without seeing one, which last year was October 4. School visits For the last four Septembers I've taken a cage of caterpillars and chrysalises to the elementary school where my daughter-in-law teaches third grade, and then another class or two who ask. The children get to see every stage at once, and if I time it right, one comes out of its chrysalis while they watch, which is better than anything on television. I bring a milkweed plant, a hand lens, and the tags, and each child gets to hold a butterfly for a moment before we let it go from the playground. Then I get a stack of thank-you drawings, most of them orange. If you're a teacher in our area and would like a visit while the migration is on (there's about a week left, and I'll have chrysalises until the middle of October), send me an e-mail. There's no charge. I just want the children to know what's flying over their heads. This year's visits so far: Sept. 13 (Mrs. Whitaker's third grade), Sept. 21 (both second grades), and one scheduled for October 1 at the other elementary school across town, if the last chrysalises hold on. Some other pages Backyard Birds of Wisconsin - Walt and June. The birds leave the monarchs alone, for the reason above. Jake's Bug Collection - Jake is nine and I think he'd like the caterpillars. Betty's Backyard Vegetable Patch - Betty is in zone 5; I'm in zone 6, but her advice travels. The Compost Pile - where my spent milkweed stalks go in November. The rest of the RainForest neighborhood Pictures: Ray took some of the roost on the 16th with the good camera. When the prints come back I'll ask my son to scan a few. Until then, the pictures are in your head, which is where they belong anyway. |
since August 1998.
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