Monarch

Here's a Monarch butterfly. This was the first one I photographed in 2020, and it was spotted on July 14. I suspect they could have been seen earlier. (My bout with Lyme Disease was keeping me at home for a while.)

These mostly orange-and-black butterflies are pretty easy to spot, though we do have another similar-but-unrelated butterfly in the NJ area, the Viceroy. (The Viceroy is a little smaller and has a slightly different wing pattern.) Still, in most areas the Monarchs greatly outnumber the Viceroys, so if you see a butterfly that looks like this it's usually a Monarch.

The Monarch caterpillars are dependent on milkweed plants - their leaves is all they'll eat. I don't know if they have preferences among the milkweed species (we have several in NJ), but it needs to be a milkweed. Even the similar dogbane species aren't acceptable to a growing Monarch caterpillar. Milkweed plants help Monarchs twice; milkweed nectar from the flowers is popular with adult Monarch butterflies too. (Note that Monarch butterflies will drink nectar from other flowers, and that the milkweed nectar isn't poisonous so many pollinators will also drink it.)

The Monarch caterpillars don't just love the taste of milkweed. Milkweed is mildly poisonous, and by eating milkweed as caterpillars a Monarch becomes poisonous themselves. This poisonousness is retained when they metamorphize from caterpillars to adult butterflies.



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