Date: 05/02/2002

Number: 1

A momentous occasion in my back yard yesterday, May 2. A VERY faded female (her wings
were dark and light brown rather than black and orange, and where the
forewing didn't overlap another wing, the wing was translucent) arrived
in my very healthy patch of A. syriaca at about 11:30 a.m., stayed three
hours (at least) and laid at least 40 eggs (which I recovered and
brought inside to raise). I studied the monarch a long time through my
binoculars. She appeared very tired. It was a beautiful, warm day--about
80 degrees by afternoon, I think--and she spent much time just resting
on the milkweed, or, when I was in the patch, looking for eggs--I made
2-3 forays out there during the time she was present--on the foliage of
nearby plants. One of her forewings had a piece missing along the
trailing edge, but her wings, though almost bereft of scales, though almost bereft of scales, were
otherwise in good condition. Her antennae drooped. But the black and
white of her thorax seemed, by contrast, very bright. She seemed
absolutely determined to remain at the patch, despite my intrusions. I
kept going down there periodically to collect eggs because the
milkweeds, which varied in height from a few inches to almost 2 feet
tall, were full of predators setting up shop (I saw lady bugs--probably
because a few winged aphids were present--spiders, and ants), and I
felt, after last winter's disastrous storm, that it was particularly
important to collect and raise her offspring. I say she seemed
determined to stay at the patch because as soon as I left it, to walk up
to the house to carry in the collected eggs, she would fly in behind me
and lay more. Curiously, I had, earlier in the morning, been working in
the garden, pulling up roots of milkweed that had invaded garden beds
I've already planted, and chopping down a few plants in beds I was
preparing for transplanting. I was only half-looking at the plants (more
in hopes of seeing some first instar monarch damage than of finding an
egg), rather than inspecting them carefully, and thinking how nice it
would be to have some monarchs to raise on the succulent new growth
rather than having to destroy it. Normally, we do not begin seeing
monarchs and finding eggs until, at the earliest, the end of June, and
more normally, sometime in July, with the big buildup in early August.
Last year, for instance, I had my first two monarchs metamorphose into
chrysalises on 8/5, then no more doing same until 8/19 (this of 150
monarchs I raised last year, the last of which went into chrysalis on
9/23). Some years I receive phone calls or emails from people in the
area about seeing early monarchs, and I have seen two early monarchs
myself, over the years--one "ghost monarch" like this one, a few years
ago, nectaring on azaleas at a women's house in Asheville, and one
bright one in Brasstown, NC, the first week of April two years ago. I
think this last one must have been a first generation for that year; the
one in my back yard yesterday was CLEARLY a final monarch of 2001. But I
have never, prior to yesterday, found eggs this early in the
season--never, as I said, before the end of June, at the earliest. And I
look for them a lot--on milkweed on roadsides, as well as on my own.


Anyway, being in the presence of a monarch that probably survived the
storm of Jan. 12-13 was magical and immensely restorative for me. I tag
for Lincoln, and had one recovery this year, and had been feeling sad
about it, knowing that at least one of my monarchs that I raised and
released had made it to Mexico, only to die in the storm.) I was
supposed to leave the house for the afternoon, but postponed what I was
supposed to do until today, so that I could remain in the presence of
this small, valiant being as long as she was available to me. Watching
her I kept thinking of all that she had seen, had been through, had
survived. I wondered where she had been born, how far she had traveled,
and what good fortune allowed her to survive the storm. (I think she may
have died last night, though I'll never know. We had a
rainstorm--several, actually--and the temperatures turned much, much
cooler. I thought of her out there somewhere, and her
what-seems-miraculous delivery of what may have been her last eggs into
my care. We needed the rain badly--we've been in drought for 4 years
now--but I hoped it went gentle on her. I did not see her after about
2:30 p.m., didn't scare her up the last two times I went out to look for
eggs. Perhaps she moved on, found another patch and laid a few more eggs
before nightfall.)


About her egg laying: she chose the smaller plants to lay on, and almost
always laid the eggs on the underside of the tenderest leaves (the
almost white ones that haven't opened out much, away from the stalk).
Only a few of the eggs are on leaves 3-4 inches long; most are on leaves
in the 1-2 inch range. Only one, that I remember, was on the upper side
of a leaf. And although she continued to lay eggs after my forays out
into the patch, in only one case did I find an egg on a stalk from which
I had already removed a leaf.


I took pictures of her, but only had a 50 mm lens, and I could not get
anywhere close to her without her flying up. I tried a few times and
then gave up, not wanting to expend her last energies escaping from me.
I'm sure she's be hard to see in the photos, but that's okay. I have
some very excellent memory photos in my brain, from watching her through
my binoculars at rest, spreading those faded wings to the sun, or
sitting with them folded. I feel so privileged to have spent some hours
in her presence.


That I saw her at all was amazing. I had come in to clean up before
leaving for the afternoon, and was washing spinach I'd picked, and the
dishes, at the kitchen sink. My view is out over the deck and into the
garden, and my eye caught a strange motion of something--I thought at
first it was a sparrow, it was so brown--that had landed on top of a
milkweed plant. The plant didn't "give," though and the brown thing
didn't move--didn't hop around the way a bird would--and I thought,
"that's strange," and reached for my binoculars. When I saw what it was,
my heart flip-flopped, and I went out for a better look. Whether she had
been out there while I was working in the garden, when my attention was
focused on the ground in front of me, I don't know.

Faded wings

Bakersville, NC

Latitude: 36.1 Longitude: -82.2

Observed by: Elizabeth
Contact Observer

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