It’s been five days since the eggs were laid…and right on schedule they’re starting to emerge — three of the five have hatched! Hopefully more will come out as the day progresses but even if only these three emerge I’m very excited.
Here’s one of the little tykes:
And I do mean little. These leaves are on a cookie plate about 12″ in diameter. You can see the edge of the plate at the top right. The caterpillar is about the size of a grain of rice at this stage.
Most of the eggs had been laid on the delicate butterfly weed leaves vs. the more robust leaves of the common milkweed, so after three days they were pretty dried up. I had placed them on fresher milkweed seeds and as you can see the little ladies/fellas have found those leaves. It was a delicate operation to transfer the remaining eggs. First, I had to find them (magnifying glass), then with s super sharp pair of bonsai scissors I snipped off just the smallest bit of original plant material I could safely manage and transfer via tweezers to a fresh leaf. Hopefully those remaining four eggs will emerge over the coming day.
Now comes the daily provisioning. They’ll need fresh leaves every day. Fortunately, my milkweed patch is thriving with what promises to be a bumper crop of seed pods, so I have plenty of fodder!
