Date: 03/21/2009

Number: 1

First PROBABLE monarch, March 10.

Wednesday, March 18, definitely at least 3 Monarchs spent a lot of time in the yard. Probably at least one more. Possibly they continued on and were replaced by three or four more.

Saturday, March 21, I checked for eggs and found 23 on the new plants and 10 more on the only old plant that had been in the greenhouse. It is sun-damaged (white spots on leaves) and heavily populated with aphids of two colors. The "old" plant was fairly young and tender and about the size of my new plants.

Today, Monday, March 23, a recheck found 38 on the new plants and 14 on the sun-damaged plant. No leaf damage was observed, so there are probably no caterpillars or none old enough to have eaten more than their shells. One of the new plants had fallen over and wilted, and I counted fewer eggs on it, but each of the other new plants had exactly six eggs. If the wilted plant had that many I could not see them all. I saw at least two but probably there are more. I keep my plants in pots, since they don't winter well.

I have not tried to put a magnifying glass to each egg to see if any are different, but assume maybe a fourth of the eggs may be queens. This is the first year I have seen queens on the plants in spring at the same time as monarchs. Possibly more than a quarter could be queens, but I have not seen multiple queens on the plants at one time.

Austin, TX

Latitude: 30.2 Longitude: -97.7

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