Butterfly Diary

[Patri]

This was the first year that I reared some monarchs. I am a botanical artist/photographer and wanted to photograph the monarch life cycle as part of my study of "common" roadside milkweed. My "journal" with lots of pictures can be viewed at:
[b][url]http://www.hometown.aol.com/blackrosegallery/BlackRoseGallery.html[/url][/b]
I will be adding QuickTime movie clips of the pupation and emergence procedure as soon as I can.[color=blue][/color][size=18][/size][size=12][/size]
I reared 3 communities. The first I collected eggs on wild milkweed before the town mowed the plants down; the next two were purchased from a farm. The first two did very well- only a couple of failures. The last one (50+ eggs) laid in late Sept started out good, but disease and parasites (possibly from a buggy batch of wild milkweed) reduced my success. Only about 15 were healthy enough to release. Next summer I want to try swallowtails.