Date: 05/10/2010

Number: 1

I had quite a day today, May 10th. First a hummer made a pass by the feeder and even came back tonight. Good sign.

Then I went out back to look for Red Admiral caterpillars since the butterflies have been around in good numbers for more than a week. No caterpillars but I think my very first RA egg. Need to research it a bit more to make sure.

Then off to check bluebird boxes. One box bluebirds fledged, one with big babies and one with small ones and a box with small chickadees. I was so relieved that they all survived last’ Sat’s weather and the last two nights of below freezing temps. And 4 tree swallow nests but no eggs. Glad to see they did not get fooled by the early spring and start laying eggs too soon.

My box monitoring was interrupted for a good half hour by a large, dark orange butterfly flying low over the field. My heart went pitter-patter! Forgot to take the binos but I was able to follow her as she stopped off at numerous 1-3 inch tall milkweed plants which had gotten zapped by the frost. Nonetheless, she did lay some eggs on the rather sickly looking plants and I found 5 of them, now safe and warm in the house.

This was very fortuitous as I was giving a monarch talk this evening and I had the eggs to show.

I’m still on a high and probably will be up half the night from all the excitement.

Alamo, MI

Latitude: 42.4 Longitude: -85.7

Observed by: Ilse
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