Date: 07/28/2015

Number: 5

It took me all night to get these photos uploaded to flickr, stayed up til 5 am and back up at 8 am. Problems with my camera, computer and flickr itself have left me spending much more time on this than I expected. But you can see photos of 2 females I took in my yard last night, one repeatedly chasing the other. It was different
than what I see with the males. I did not see the female following a
regular flightpath, and she was stopping frequently and nectaring along with
ovipositing in the most sunlit patches of my yard. As the two came across each other while nectaring or ovipositing,
a chase would ensue, most often it appeared initiated by Storm--clearly a female. At one point, both were laying eggs, and I realized they were both females. But I could not confirm this with a photo, the 2nd monarch was being chased off repeatedly and never had much of a chance to sit still for a photo. It appeared to be the same two females for about a 1/2 hour, but since they kept going out of sight and returning, I can't say for certain it was always them. But I can say for certain that the most aggressive one was a female that I call Storm, who was ovipositing and nectaring. She preferred the patch by my porch, and would chase the 2nd monarch when it came near this patch. As things escalated, they were swirling around each other over all the best milkweed patches in my yard.

I am trying to keep track of the monarchs in my yard by taking ID photos of them--right and left ventral wing, and comparing white spots on the upper edge of the ventral hindwing. Lady was not among these two, it appeared to be Storm and
New Girl. See photos of them and the repeated pursuits here, along with story under the title and photo captions
https://www.flickr.com/photos/candy__kasey/sets/72157654253186014/with/20136
321846/ That makes 4 different egg-laying females in my yard since 7-22-15 that I can confirm with my photos.


I just walked outside to get my mail, and 3 males are nectaring in the clone next to my garage! So easy to identify as males, but I took pics anyway. I will download them later. They are sitting quite close to each other, engaging in a rare spiral but all 3 were nectaring within 10 feet of each other, and 2 of them are repeatedly nectaring together on Joe Pye blooms just inches apart. One male settled in my fennel, then flew up and swooped at me, bopping me in the head! It actually made an audible sound as it hit my hair!

Candy

sylvania, OH

Latitude: 41.7 Longitude: -83.7

Observed by: candy
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