Date: 04/28/2013

Number: 1

We had a beautiful sunny day today with temps in the low 80’s.
A brief thunderstorm last night brought about ½ inch of rain and about 2-3 minutes of hail around midnight.
Great to see some more rain……been getting traces for the past week.

Asperula is doing extremely well in the area…..wish there were more Monarch eggs though.
We should be able to harvest lots of seed pods this year on a positive note.

We did find another solitary egg this morning on native milkweed in our backyard.

We walked to the vacant lot and meadow about ¼ from our house to check out the vegetation late this morning.
Lots of asperula and plenty of prairie verbeena and thistle blooms…….but no eggs.
We probably checked about 200 plants with no luck.
The oleander aphids are thick now…..some of the plants appear to have yellow stalks they are so infested.

While we were there we did see 2 male remigrants to our surprise.
Both were having difficulty flying in the occasional gusty SE breezes and were eventually blown off to the north.
They were both trying to nectar on the thistle blooms.

This first one (top image) we saw had noticeable wing damage and faded colors. We saw this second one (bottom image) about 15 minutes later and he was faded and was missing one of his hindwings….exposing his abdomen from the side.
The wind was having its way with him when he was airborne.

Driftwood, TX

Latitude: 30.1 Longitude: -98

Observed by: Chuck
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