It’s always a good week when monarch butterflies are flying in your yard.
Generally migrating monarchs arrive in Arizona in the end of August. It would be nice if we are seeing some adults who completed their life cycles here.
Category: butterflies (Page 14 of 43)
Often when a caterpillar is ready to pupate, it crawls away from the host plant where it was feeding. That hiding behavior may make finding the chrysalis and adult butterfly more difficult.
In this case, however, the queen caterpillar formed a chrysalis right on the plant it was feeding on, a rush milkweed. Do you see the remains of the chrysalis?
There’s a freshly-emerged queen butterfly right in the open for all to see.
Have you ever found a newly-emerged butterfly drying its wings?
Let’s spend some time in this lovely meadow.
Butterflies are flitting from flower to flower. It is enjoyable to watch them at work.
Can you see the long tongue (proboscis) of this skipper moth probing the clover flower?
Look how orange this wood nymph’s antennae are.
You can’t help but notice the eye spots on the wings. This one has a bit missing from its hind wing that is shaped like a bird beak. Maybe the bird was fooled by the eye spots, which allowed the butterfly to get away.
Another wood nymph, which also survived.
It can be a dangerous world for butterflies in the meadow.
Don’t forget, National Moth Week starts on Saturday July 23, 2016.
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.