A Field Guide to the North Side of Old Mill Hill, Atlantic Mine, MI
Archive for the ‘Butterflies’ Category.
Butterflies give me a lot of trouble
S_ and Sam came back from a walk on October 3 with this little butterfly perched on a small Queen-Anne’s-Lace blossom. The wings are about 2 cm wide, give or take a bit. It was 40 degrees F outside at the time, and the butterfly was cold enough that it was content to just sit there while I tried to get some decent pictures.
OK, I’ve got to do this one. Any insect-themed blog eventually has to have an entry about Monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus. It’s required[1]. So, here we go.
Last summer, S_ and Sam caught[2] several Monarch caterpillars and raised them in a terrarium. While this made it easy to watch them, the glass made it hard to get really sharp photographs.
S_ was growing some petunias in pots on the south side of the house last spring, and one day noticed that she had quite an infestation of some pretty eye-catching caterpillars. You can see three of them just in this one picture[1], there were probably a dozen or so in total:
