Monarchs rule

Common Milkweed

When we acquired our property 10 years ago, we were surprised by the absence of the common milkweed plant. As its 'common' name implies, it's, well, common in our part of the world. So in our effort to help restore our property to its most natural state, we scattered some milkweed seeds into some of our most disturbed areas - including around the oil well and in the eventual wildflower meadow - hoping that it would find our conditions suitable.  Happily, the common milkweed, along with it's sister, the swamp milkweed, has made our home its home. 

Swamp Milkweed

A tall and sturdy plant with thick leaves and pretty pink flowers, the milkweed is the primary food source of the beautiful Monarch butterfly.  The plant is toxic to animals, including deer and groundhogs (who devastate just about every other plant on our property) as well as birds.  And while the birds don't naturally eat plants, they do enjoy caterpillars and butterflies, so ingesting the poison of the milkweed makes Monarchs toxic to its predators.  On the underside of a milkweed leaf is the only place a Monarch will lay her eggs, so where the milkweed thrives the Monarch thrives.  

An individual Monarch assumes four distinct identities over the course of about 30 days. The egg is where it all begins for our Monarch (I shall call him Henry).  Henry is laid as a single egg on the underside of one of our abundant milkweed leaves by his adult female mother, and will hatch in approximately four days.  It is believed that an adult female, like Henry's mom, will lay between 100 and 300 eggs over her short life span.  

Monarch caterpillar (larval stage)

The next phase for Henry is the larval stage in which he identifies as a caterpillar.  At this point in his life, Henry becomes a voracious eater with an insatiable appetite (I am reminded of my 17-year old nephew). As a caterpillar, Henry will undergo five growth spurts, as he munches milkweed leaves, outgrows his skin, and then molts into an ever larger caterpillar.

Monarch chrysalis (pupal stage)

Henry's vacated home

After about two weeks of munching and molting, it's time for Henry to become his next self.  So with his rearmost feet, he hangs himself upside down from the underside of one of his delicious milkweed leaves, and cocoons himself up into a beautiful green pocket, called a chrysalis.  This chrysalis will be his home for another week or so, within which he will undergo the most amazing of all his transformations.

As an adult male, Henry identifies as a butterfly.  There will be no more growing or morphing for Henry now.  Alas, he has entered his twilight years. In this last stage of his life, Henry is on the prowl for many mates (he is Henry the Monarch, after all).  Unless he is from the generation of Monarchs who will migrate to Mexico, he will spend this last phase of his interesting life - which will last about a week - impregnating females and dining on nectar to sustain his virility. 

Henry

Learn more about the complex generational aspects of Monarch butterflies, and their migration to Mexico here. 

Is this where the ducklings go?

In the last week, we’ve had two wildlife sightings at the pond that remind us of the tough road ahead for our Wood Duck ducklings.   

First, we came across this old gal below.  She's a Common Snapping Turtle about a foot in diameter.  She was excavating a hole in the top of our dam to bury her eggs.  This is our first sighting of a 'snapper' at our pond, but since they are pretty elusive, our assumption is that she’s been here for a while (snapping turtles live into their 70s and beyond, grow throughout their lives, and given her size, it's entirely possible that she and I are the same age!).  We just happened to catch her out in the open for her egg-laying event, where she emerges from the muck only long enough to dig the hole and deposit about 30 eggs.  They are strong ambush predators that can take just about anything they can grab.  And their necks are long (it is completely retracted in this photo) and flexible enough to reach around and bite you if you pick them up by the sides of their shells. 

Then, today, we got a glimpse of one of the larger denizens of the pond.  We rarely see the large-mouth bass in the pond and never see the biggest ones.  But the one in this picture was showing off today.  For scale, the smaller fish in the shot are bluegill.  They get up to a foot long but I estimate that the ones in the photo are 6-8 inches long.  There are two bass on the right side and the largest looks to be about 4x bigger than the bluegills on the left, which puts the bass in the 25-30 inch range!

Large-mouth bass will eat just about anything they can swallow and at that size, a duckling could be a snack.  And of course, this probably isn’t the biggest one in the pond.  As Obi Wan reminded us, there’s always a bigger fish.
 

It’s hard to know if either of these predators have actually taken any of our newest ducklings, but I suppose they would if circumstances were right.  It’s a dangerous world out there!  If it’s any consolation, though, it’s tough going for everyone.  The next day, we went to check on the nest where the snapper had laid her eggs and they had all been dug up.  It's likely that a raccoon or mink smelled them and ate her entire brood.  And of course, snapping turtles do prey on small fish like baby bass.

It’s the circle of life in Appalachia!