Monarch butterfly

Monarch Butterfly
The monarch butterfly is well known in much of North America because of its migratory habits.  It is one of the few insects which travels north to south then north again taking advantage of warm winters further south.  The weird thing about this photo is that it wasn't taken in North America; it was taken in the Caribbean. 
I thought that was pretty amazing; how did a monarch butterfly get to St. Maarten?  I suppose there are a lot of answers, one of them being it may have been blown there from a storm and been fortunate enough to come down on land rather than over open ocean.  However, if I thought that was strange, I was in for a shocker last week.
We have been travelling in New Zealand over the last three weeks.  There are a lot of invasive species which have taken up residence here, many plants and animals which are either innocuous to the environment or devastating to it.  Good examples of nasty additions include broom and gorse, both of which are completely taking over large areas of the Islands.  In my wanderings though, I did not expect to see a monarch butterfly.
Sure enough there it was, flitting about as they tend to do.  They are robust feeders as adults, taking nectar from whatever flower it comes across.  Monarchs are very specific eaters as caterpillars though; they have to have access to milkweed plants.  The milkweed plant is what gives them their chemical protection as adults.  Milkweed plants contain a chemical poisonous to most other animals, especially vertebrates.  There is a cardiac glycoside present which causes heart failure.  Birds who eat the monarchs end up getting very sick; some even die.  So they tend to be safe from predation.  But to produce a monarch, there has to be milkweed; there is just no other way.
Interesting enough, with the monarch present, my only conclusion was that milkweed plants must also be around, although I had not seen any.  I discovered later that there are some present in New Zealand, how they got here and why remains a mystery.  However, the fact that these beautiful insects are now gracing the Isles of the Kiwis is a wonderful thing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The maze of life.

Image
The skeletonizing of a leaf by a leaf miner. Born to tunnel; a simple egg laid on a leaf produces a tiny caterpillar.  It immediately becomes an industrial machine, boring into the leaf and consuming the matter between layers.  Barely visible to the human eye, it proceeds in a relatively straight line until it finds an obstacle.  Undeterred, it changes direction and continues its momentum; becoming larger with each centimeter consumed.  The tunnels become larger and its progress faster.  Soon it has consumed almost half an entire leaf.  Thwarted by the main vein running through the middle, it is now large enough to chew through the tougher structure.  Continuing the destruction, the caterpillar finds an outside edge.  It is time to rest.  Spinning silken web, it makes a bed out of the very vegetation it has been consuming.  When it wakes, it will no longer be a caterpillar, but a newly emerged moth bent on laying its own eggs to star...
Read more

Western thrashing ant attacking insect larva.

Image
Western thrashing ant attacking insect larva. We arrived at an area of southwest Washington called Long Beach yesterday.   This morning I was out for a quiet walk with my camera; it was equipped with a macro lens and macro lighting system.   It is always fun to explore new places to see what kinds of finds can be discovered.   I had quite a bit of luck as I ended up with half a dozen pictures which I am excited about.   The one above is an example. Thrashing ants feed on a wide variety of foods.   They will take seeds, honeydew from aphids, and small prey items such as this insect larva.   Ants have very strong jaws.   They are capable of subduing smaller insects with relative ease and, when working together, can overpower significantly larger creatures.   They will bring their find back to the nest where it will be fed to larvae, the queen, and shared amongst the adults.   When in “bug mode,” I am scanning the environment for a...
Read more

How to get rid of a wasp's nest.

Image
The yellow jacket wasp. Yesterday I was busily working on some yard work when I looked up and saw a most uncomfortable sight.  Wasps had moved in.  A small nook in my deck cover was now the home to a yellow jacket wasp colony.  If I have learned anything about wasps during my time on Mother Earth, it is that wasp nests only get bigger over time.  It is better to deal with them now rather than later.  It is one of those problems you simply cannot ignore and hope it goes away.  If you have ever played one of those computer games where you obtain resources and build an empire, the development of a wasp nest is something like that.  A single wasp, a queen, slowly constructs a tiny enclave in some hopefully safe spot.  Foraging for food, she builds a nest, lays her eggs, and tends the young until they mature.  These underlings then go on to forage, build, and tend in a slowly exponential manner.  Soon, small becomes big, then big beco...
Read more