Monarchs in Maine

[donald adams]

Cheryl and I just got back today from a 5 day visit to our summer-house in Maine with her brother and his wife. The biggest Lep surprise there in my view occurred when we all decided to take a boat excursion to Monhegan Island on Friday, 10 miles off the mainland coast. Here the most prevalent butterfly was the Monarch where I got a count of 9 butterflies!! Most of these were nectaring at robust patches of Milkweed in full bloom (like ours 3 weeks ago) or at one of several large shrubs of Privet in flower and festooned with bumble bees, Monarchs and Red Admirals. In spite of this I couldn’t find any signs of Monarch cats or eggs on the Milkweed.

 

Back at our summer house on Westport Island there were also Monarchs although not as many as on Monhegan, Banded Purples, Common Wood Nymphs and lots of Frits; mostly Aphrodite I believe but these were always on the fly and I could never good a good id.

 

Back here in W. Bridgewater, Mass today we had…

 

Monarch butterflies                        3 (On Butterfly Bush and Zinnias)

Monarch cats                                   1

Monarch eggs                                  6 (The first two I reported last week are now feeding cats)

Spicebush Swt butterflies               4 (On Butterfly Bush and Zinnias)

Spicebush Swt cats                          5 (On Sassafras)

Black Swt butterflies                       3

Black Swt eggs                                 3 (On Dill)

Great Spangled Frits                        5

Pearl Crescents                                3

Hemaris Thysbes                              4 (On Bee Balm and Butterfly Bush)

 

Don Adams