Date: 03/16/2021

Number: 6

This was a lovely warm day, everything budding & blooming, bees buzzing, and female monarchs finding tender new milkweed sprouts now emerging. They timed it well.

I followed several of the female monarchs at different times as they fluttered and flew about the meadows looking for milkweed and taking breaks to sip on the abundant false garlic flowers. Thankfully, the milkweed (Asclepias viridis) is now emerging in good numbers. It is still hard to find, so it takes the skill and determination of a female monarch to discover the tiny sprouts in the sea of green.

The bumblebees really are buzzing and often they pestered the monarchs, but the monarchs usually handled it well and just went diligently on their business ~ a few times giving a bit of a push back to the bees!

One of the females I followed the longest had damage to both her hindwings and her left forewing. That did not stop her from flying just fine ~ in fact she seemed to me particularly sprightly as she found numerous hidden milkweed sprouts to lay her eggs on. This is a photo of the lovely intrepid monarch laying one of her eggs.

Montgomery, TX

Latitude: 30.4 Longitude: -95.8

Observed by: Kathy
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