Sublime Sunday ~ Look What I Found In My Garden!

Last week I got to witness something truly amazing!

Let me start at the beginning though! Approximately two weeks ago I found a couple of Monarch butterfly caterpillars on some milkweed that I have in my garden. I had been keeping an eye on them for when they form their chrysalis and hoped to see them emerge.

A short video of the caterpillars munching down on the milkweed!

One morning it was chilly and it looked like they were almost hibernating. One was just hanging upside down under a leaf and the other one had curled up around a spent Conehead flower. About an hour later it warmed up a little bit and they were crawling around and eating again.

I also saw some teeny tiny Monarch caterpillars that must have just hatched as well. Just look at how tiny they start out as. I circled the baby caterpillar on the milkweed leaf in the upper left photo to give you an idea of how small they really are.

I'm glad I saw the big caterpillars after they had grown some as I only noticed the baby caterpillars because I started to look for more of them.

Let me just say that the two caterpillars that I planned on keeping an eye on must've been a lot faster than they looked too because they were there one evening and gone the following morning.

I searched all around for them but was not able to locate them but I did, however, find a chrysalis that was evidently from another caterpillar. I know it was from a different caterpillar as it was far too developed to be from the two caterpillars that I had been keeping an eye on.

I knew from looking at the chrysalis that the Monarch butterfly would be emerging soon and that they normally emerge mid morning. So, last week while I checked on the chrysalis that I found, I spotted a flutter of color from the Conehead flowers and found a different chrysalis with a Monarch that had emerged shortly before I got outside.

While photographing that one, the original emerged from its chrysalis. It happened that fast!

Not only that..these are 4th generation caterpillars and Monarch's so the butterflies will take off on a long journey to Mexico! Other generations of Monarch butterflies can live up to six weeks but the 4th generation can live up to eight months after migrating to the warmer climates. Pretty amazing in my book and I'm thankful to have been able to see them in most of their stages (I didn't see the butterfly eggs).

After snapping a bunch of photos I went inside for a little while. At about 2:30 pm I decided to go check on them and the first one was gone but I caught the second one as it was just fluttering off so I wasn't able to photograph that part. I don't know how to get to Mexico from my house but I can tell you that the Monarch butterfly fluttered to the top of the driveway and took a left ... lol!

Still lots of other caterpillars out there both large and very small. They do grow quickly and should all be on their way by the end of October if the weather holds out. I took this next photo this morning and it was raining a bit.

I'm very hopeful that some of the Monarch butterflies will be able to complete their long journey ahead of them before it gets too cold. I know Maryland has tagged 4th Generation Monarchs with stickers before and they have been found in Mexico. If I did my calculations correctly then the two original caterpillars that I spotted should be emerging any day now from their chrysalis. I've still been looking but haven't found them but I plan on going out mid morning for the next few days to see if I spot any more flutterings of color out in my garden. My last photo (for this post anyway) shows an empty chrysalis which was the first chrysalis that I found and the second Monarch to fly off for Mexico!

Thank you @c0ff33a for #sublimesunday!!
All photos and text by me @deerjay. All rights reserved.