Last Wednesday I got a repeat of last year’s first: witnessing a Monarch laying eggs! Our milkweed patch is thriving and so naturally I was delighted to see activity. Last year’s eggs unfortunately were eaten by something — ants, likely — so I’ve taken two steps to hopefully ensure success in having these little critters make it to adulthood: put out some ant block to keep that pestilence at bay, and brought in one small plant that I saw momma Monarch lay her eggs on.
And yes, plural – three eggs on that small (6 inches tall) milkweed seedling. If I hadn’t seen the precise plant she laid her eggs on, and even the specific leaf, I doubt I would have ever spotted them. They’re less than a millimeter in size, light green with vertical stripes.
I needed to act fast to get a habitat built. Step one was to get some screen from the local hardware store and then build a frame. Fortunately, I had a pre-built frame, a failed experiment of a compost sifter. It was too light and flimsy to handle the rigors of compost screening but looks like it will be perfect for a Monarch habitat:
I carefully placed the host plant in the cage in a small bucket with some damp paper towels — and waited. Info on the ‘net says eggs hatch in 3-5 days. Well, in my case, it was 4 days and 23 1/2 hours! (Poppa was getting nervous.) Sure enough, first behavior was to eat their egg case — waste not, want not, I guess.
But these little guys are tiny. Today I added some fresh leaves and was able to spot one of the hatchlings. only about 18 hours old but has already eaten a section of leaf bigger than s/he is. (Only about 1.5-2 mm long at this point.)
The paper towel had probably 20-30 nearly microscopic green spots in one place, presumably the caterpillar’s…um…excrement.
I’ve only spotted the one caterpillar though I know all three hatched. Hopefully the other two are munching away hidden under one of the leaves, but I’m very much a nervous parent, likely until they quite literally fly the coop, but especially so while they’re so tiny.
Cautious optimism!
