Monarchs in central Florida

[flgflowers]

I live in central Florida. I raised 8 Monarch caterpillars fm eggs and released them as butterflies about a week ago. Since then I have not seen any Monarchs at all around my butterfly garden and I have quite a few milkweed plants plus other flowers. At this time of year would these butterflies have headed north and not stayed in my area? I had thought I might see one or two of the Monarchs return to my garden.

Would appreciate any information on this.

[harpo787]

I thought I read that South and Central Florida had a monarch population that was constant. I'm not sure about that though...I'm only an egg when it comes these things.

I do not grok.

[Jim]

Florida is a bit of a mystery where monarchs are concerned - there does appear to be a resident population throughout the winter in some areas, but just as you have observed there are many reports of dwindling numbers of monarchs over the winter that are replenished in the late fall. Through our tagging program, we do know that some monarchs that begin the migration further north in the U.S. and Canada end up in Florida rather than Mexico, presumably becoming a part of a resident population. Check out our Tag Recovery Database (select Florida as the recovery state and leave everything else blank) to see these records - you can specify a sort by decending distance for a more sophisticated search that makes this even easier to see.

Even the monarch experts don't completely grok monarchs - hmmm...is it proper to speak of degrees of grokking?

[pinkbungalow]

I am very new to this and posted for the first time a couple days ago, but I wanted to reply since I am in Central FL too (Orlando). I haven't seen many butterflies yet, but had 12 healthy caterpillars once I started watering the milkweed daily. It has been so dry mine wasn't sprouting many leaves until I started giving them extra water. (My mystery was that the caterpillars were disappearing, so I put a few of them in a habitat in the lanai and today 2 are making cocoons.)

H

[Jim]

(My mystery was that the caterpillars were disappearing, so I put a few of them in a habitat in the lanai and today 2 are making cocoons.)

Hey "pink" - welcome to the forums!

Just a quick FYI..."cocoon" refers to the silk covering that most moths spin around themselves prior to pupation (inside the cocoon you'll find the pupa) and as you are observing, monarchs (and most butterflies for that matter) don't spin these; rather, they simply shed their caterpillar skin to reveal the pupal skin underneath which will harden to form the pupa (or "chrysalis").

[pinkbungalow]

Thanks for the correction on terminology. So as of this morning I havve one pupa - I was walking by the habitat I made and just as I was he was shedding the skin to reveal the green pupa. He was wiggling around this morning but still appeared to be a caterpillar hanging like a j. he (it?) continued to wiggle some as a pupa, then seemed to calm down. cool!