GIbson County Monarchs

06/01/2026

I think I recently mentioned we hadn’t seen any Monarchs. Over the weekend and again today, though, we saw a number of them around our milkweed. It’s hard to know how many since they don’t stay still for long. We saw several different swallowtails as well.

05/30/2026

The volunteer milkweed around the house is blooming and smells great alongside the lavender. We had a visitor but have yet to see a Monarch. The milkweed in the pasture is doing well but not quite as far along

04/18/2026

The season has started. The milkweed near our house has really taken off. The rest in the field is starting to show. We are mowing a part of it to delay the plants so they hopefully last later in the summer.

11/05/2025

What a mystery.

10/20/2025

#91 eclosed this morning so our season comes to an end. It is very late in the year so I’m hoping this one can make it to Mexico. We released 66 this year. While it seemed like we saw more Monarchs, we limited our collection due to our vacation falling in the middle of the Fall migration. We have a number of new milkweed spots in our pasture so it looks good for next year.

09/30/2025

We are winding down for the year. We had two come out this morning and we have just 3 chrysalis. Yesterday, Karen did find a small cat on a plant just off our porch. We still have plants to feed it but it’s doubtful it will make it to Mexico. We did not collect as many this year since we were on vacation earlier this month. It did seem like there were far more Monarchs this year.

09/22/2025

If you haven’t already watched it, here’s a 60 minutes segment on the Monarch wintering grounds in Mexico. It is shocking to realize that they all stay in an area around 4.5 acres. A touching point is that they arrive in the area in late October, coinciding with the Day of the Dead, so the locals associate the returning Monarch’s with the spirits of their ancestors.

The annual migration of monarch butterflies is one of science's great mysteries: millions of monarchs know the correct path even though they have never made the long journey themselves. As 60 Minutes found, the expedition to watch the migration can be its own challenge.

08/28/2025

Here’s a new one. While we were releasing a few Monarch’s this afternoon, we saw this wild one come by and land on the milkweed next to our porch. I got shot of it when I realized it was staying on the plant. After it left I went over and found it had laid an egg!

08/18/2025

Another circle of life thing. This was a caterpillar we’d found in the pasture. It lived fine as a caterpillar, but this happened right after going into chrysalis. The dark spot is a hole where a larvae came out. We killed the larvae so it would not become a fly. This is why we like to find them as eggs and raise them in individual containers.

08/05/2025

This is an example of what we’re hoping to prevent by raising them inside. We raised this caterpillar for a few days but it died soon after hanging J. Right after it died, this larvae came out. Something, possibly a tachinid fly, laid an egg in the young caterpillar which grew and fed on the caterpillar from the inside. If we can find them as eggs, they are less likely to die like this.