Monarch Butterflies

Weather: It’s time to start counting the days since the last rain. The clouds that moved through this week were like the robin, just passing through for some other destiny.

There’s still snow in the Jémez from Tchicoma south.

Last useful rain: 3/21. Week’s low: 21 degrees F. Week’s high: 85 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Cherries, peaches, Bradford pears, purple leaf plums, flowering quince, forsythia, daffodils. Cherries get tall and tend to be planted behind houses.

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Alfilerillo, tansy and purple mustards, western stickseed, native and common dandelions

What’s blooming in my yard: Sandcherries, vinca

What’s reviving/coming up in the area: Weeping willow, heath aster, wild lettuce, pigweed, needle grass

What’s reviving/coming up in my yard: Beauty bush, catmint, Maximilian sunflower

Tasks: Men are still getting their irrigation systems working. One was out with a shovel in his ditch, another was letting yellowish water bubble out onto the ground. One house had standing water in its yard one morning this year. A man was out with a hoe working in another field around noon.

I spent several days testing hoses before I installed them. The first batch, which was made in China, all had connectors that leaked at the fittings. The second batch, which was from the same company but made in this country, had one with a leaking connector and another that only delivered water for half its length. The ones I installed only had functional water holes on one side, so I have to move the hoses from the centers of the watered areas to the edges. I have no idea how they will actually work when it gets warm and there’s less humidity in the air.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, robin, butterflies, small bees, small black ants, first house flies.

I found a hornets’ nest in the dead sweet pea leaves I was removing. I picked it out with the tips of my nippers. A few minutes later there was rustling in the trash bag and I thought I saw wings. I kicked the bag away from me, so the opening was in the other direction. There are limits to my curiosity.

Weekly update: I started seeing small butterflies this week. They usually were flying at a distance and it was impossible to detect their color.

Then, it must have been Friday, I was walking in the drive when a flock rose and flew off in different directions. I wasn’t expecting them, and was so disoriented by their movement I couldn’t focus on a single one to identify it.

Saturday this happened again. This time I had a sense they were gray and orange, and in the area of the sandcherry which had come into bloom on Wednesday. Prunus besseyi is densely covered with small, fragrant, rose-shaped flowers.

Yesterday I moved more cautiously and saw a number on the shrub, sharing the space with small bees and house flies that also started hatching this week.

I don’t think they are monarch butterflies, but I don’t know enough about Lepidoptera to be sure. The only ones I recognize in this area are the white cabbage and yellow lettuce ones. The woman who sternly told me several years ago that the latter were sulphur butterflies, also said the small orange ones I’d seen were monarchs. However, every monarch I saw in Michigan was much larger and had more definite patterns. Wikipedia says their wingspan is 3.5" to 4". [1]

As a child I must have assumed butterflies were like plants. The eggs hatched in spring, the caterpillars were around in early summer, and the butterflies appeared later. That narrative matched my observations and the things I knew about the life cycle of insects.

That image was one reason I had such a problem recognizing the butterflies this week. It simply was too early in the season.

I’d seen headlines about more monarchs wintering over this past year in México, but hadn’t bothered to read them. When I went back to the stories I found Danaus plexippus go through several generations in a year spread over a number of geographic areas. The differences between what I see here and what I remembered from the north fit that biogeographic pattern.

The butterflies fly south in fall to winter in forests a little northwest of Mexico City, where the air is moist and temperatures rarely fall below freezing. [2] For a time, scientists assumed they were in a hibernating state in which they neither ate nor drank. A reserved area has been established in México and observers have found they do go out in the day to seek water. [3]

The ones that migrate begin moving north in late winter, and lay eggs in the south that begin hatching caterpillars in March. They, in turn, become butterflies in April. Adults feed on nectar, and follow their food supply north, so that each of the four generations hatched in a year lives farther north. [4]

I couldn’t discover anything about differences in physical size by region or season. However, research has been done on the coloration. Females are more amber colored, and males are more orange. [5] More important, those raised in warmer environments, like New Mexico, are lighter colored than those raised in the Midwest. [6]

I don’t know if the quality of the milkweed the caterpillars eat or the kinds of nectar eaten by adultsl has any impact on size. The larvae feed on a number of Asclepias species, and their nutritional quality may differ by environment. Moisture, soil, and temperature may all make a difference within a single species. Most of the research is done in the Midwest where the butterflies spend most of their time.

Notes on photographs: All taken 14 April 2019. I lopped off the sandcherry branches that were crossing my paths; its shape is still asymmetrical.

End notes:
1. Wikipedia. "Monarch Butterfly."
2. Wikipedia. "Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve."
3. "No Food for Five Months?" University of Wisconsin Arboretum Journey North website.
4. "Annual Life Cycle." University of Minnesota Monarch Lab website.

5. Andrew K. Davis, Jean Chi, Catherine Bradley, and Sonia Altizer. "The Redder the Better: Wing Color Predicts Flight Performance in Monarch Butterflies." PloS One, 25 July 2012.

6. Andrew K. Davis, Bethany D. Farrey, and Sonia Altizer. "Variation in Thermally Induced Melanism in Monarch Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) from Three North American Populations." Journal of Thermal Biology 30:410–421:2005.