Eleven monarch caterpillars on the neighbor’s milkweed this morning, and a dozen or so bees tending the flowers. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen caterpillars grow and disappear to somewhere. We haven’t seen any chrysalis; they’re either still invisible to us or they’ve been taken by the birds.

jg

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-jg:

I got a couple of pictures of these buggers yesterday morning.

The big ones are so big! They are about 5 cm (2 inches) long.

Several fat monarch butterfly caterpillars on milkweed.
So big!

This small one is so small! It just has tiny little antenna nubs, so cute!

One tiny new monarch butterfly caterpillar on a milkweed flower.
So tiny!

Can you imagine starting out so small, just a couple of millimeters, and over the course of a few days (I assume, I don’t know) growing by about a factor of 10 or 20? That’s just in length, in volume it’s more like 100x!

And, there were fifteen (!) of them out there.

-jg:

We counted over 20 caterpillars this morning. There were 17 on one milkweed alone!

Many many Monarch caterpillars on one milkweed plant.
How many can you see here?
-jg:

That same milkweed plant has been decimated in 24 hours.

A well eaten milkweed plant in the parking strip.
There are still a lot of caterpillars on there.
-jg:

Linden and Ali spotted one chrysalis last night in the nearby flowers. There are probably a few more in there but likely the rest are gone, taken down with the yard remodel that is ongoing in the neighbor’s yard. See here.

A green chrysalis hangs among thr bright green Douglas iris blades.
Sole survivor.
-jg:

Well, that was quick. The chrysalis hatched!

A hatched chrysalis in the Douglas iris.
At least one got away. I think there is a second in the blurry background there.

We spotted a couple of other chrysali among the iris too.

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