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I hadn't really expected another round of monarchs this late in the year, but the butterflies have decided otherwise. ( continued monarch and nature news, including talk of spiders and a photo of one )

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Also posted to randompictures and splodefromcute

Well, after what was shaping up to be a disastrous year for monarch reproduction here in the garden, I got a successful round in late summer/early autumn. I wasn’t seeing any more wasps by then, although one chrysalis appeared to have been taken by one anyway. But that's nothing compared to the awful toll the wasps took in the spring: two entire ( Read more... )

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Yesterday's monarch count: 44 eggs, 6 caterpillars. Four cats were 4mm; two, 11mm. The larger ones were both in the more sheltered bed area, on the plant right next to the wall, on leaves as low and close to the wall as they could get. I don't think that's a coincidence ( Read more... )

Sunday's monarch count: 14 eggs, 38 caterpillars. Approximate lengths: 2, 1mm; 6, 1.27mm; 23, 4.76mm; 2, 8mm; 3, 11.11mm; and 2, 14.28mm.

(Handy-dandy mm to inches convertorI need to a) get a tiny ruler or tape in metric, so I can stop converting from inches, and b) take clearer notes as to caterpillar sizes. It took me half an hour to interpret ( Read more... )

Monarch count today: 28 eggs, 60 caterpillars. 59 of the cats ranged from about 3-4mm; one was about 31mm. That's 22 fewer eggs than three days ago, but only 5 more cats. The 31mm cat has got to be one of the ones that were 25mm on Monday, but the other two are gone. Aside from that, how many eggs hatched into caterpillars, how many died, and how ( Read more... )