Milkweed and Monarchs, 2016

The monarch habitat apparently requires milkweed. Some volunteers came up this spring and I kept an eye on them. They came up in a field that had been extensively disturbed ( 3 deep trenches for a geothermal installation) in late 2014.

I had a false alarm in 2015, something that looked like milkweed, that also got eaten, but turned out not to be the real thing.

In 2016, though, did find a couple of caterpillars. And in early October, a couple of monarchs

The first milkweed I saw was in a wood chip pile that I talked the phone company line clearing crew to dump here -- about 6 of those huge truckloads. The next spring, 2015, this came up and as near as I could determine with my books was that it was a milkweed.
By the end of summer they all looked like this, covered with a web and crawling with small larvae of some kind. Similar to gypsy moth, but more spread out and the little crawlies are smaller and different. No longer sure if this was really the milkweed associated with monarchs, though, since these did branch quite a bit. In any case, saw no sign of monarchs that year, 2015.

Common Milkweed Asclepias syriaca
Some of them were not very happy, being visited by tiny white creatures
Couple more kinds of visitors, this time some brown egg looking things and a bug of some kind.

On the 2nd of September, I found this. Looked like the right kind of caterpiller, except it was the wrong color, and photographed from this angle is obviously dead.
On the 6th of September found two live ones, happily munching away.
Monarch caterpiller chowing down on milkweed
Two days later sill at work. I presume the brown pellets are the output at this stage.

something ate the monarch caterpillers
No sign of a chrysalis (sp) or in fact that much chomping. Only this plant and one other had a couple of the caterpillers. Both have the ravaged top with some partially eaten leaves underneath. Also deposits of what I think would be caterpiller scat.
no flowers, no sign of monarchs

The only caterpillers I saw on the milkweed got eaten by birds befoe they'd finished even two leaves. But some others must have been around since this guy was freshly out of his or her crysallis , just stretching its wings.
The only caterpillers I saw on the milkweed got eaten by birds befoe they'd finished even two leaves. But some others must have been around since this guy was freshly out of his or her crysallis , just stretching its wings.