We spotted our first monarch caterpillar of 2021 this evening. It’s on our tiny, barely growing milkweed so I moved it to the bigger ones out back

I was picking up some fallen branches from the lawn to mow the lawn and out of the corner of my eye something reddish or orange shot through the edge of my peripheral vision. Again I saw it go back the opposite direction again out of the corner of my eye. It was in the vicinity of our potted milkweed plants on the patio It seems way to early since we haven’t seen them until August here during previous years.

Freshly emerged monarch butterfly drying itself on the hibiscus flower.Here is a picture of a monarch Butterfly on a large hibiscus flower. After we got home from geocaching today Molly looked out the window and saw a monarch sitting a hibiscus flower. She ended up roosting underneath of it over night and flew away this morning. We knew some caterpillars had wandered off because we saw them then the next day they were all gone.

Two monarch butterflies nectoring on our new pink swamp milkweed flowersThis is a picture that shows two monarchs butterflies nectoring on our new pink swamp milkweed. Our milkweed was eaten bare save a few new leaves the caterpillars hadn’t found yet. We happened to be at a hardware store picking up sand for our sandbag and saw there was still some stuff in the garden center so I suggested we go look for milkweed just in case they have any left.

It was a decent day and we wanted some fresh air today so we opted to go out on the riverfront trail and grab a few caches. It was a pretty nice day though. Pretty much the whole time out there we kept seeing these butterflies flying all around. Butterfly on plant along the Northwest River TrailHere’s a picture of a reddish brown butterfly that we saw many of on the Northwest River Trail today.

Our milkweed has lived up to it’s hopes now. While we have not noticed any butterflies they’ve obviously been here. The other day was the first time that we had noticed any caterpillars. They’re brightly colored and all but surprisingly difficult to spot sometimes. Once you spot one you can’t help but notice more. I don’t know for sure how many we have on our milkweed plant but there are lots of them.