Monarch EVERYWHERE!!!

Monarch Butterflies

&

The Migration Festival 

in our home town!

This weekend me and the Mr. went down 7 blocks to our little local fairground.

Within there is a garden...all flowery and quaint..but amidst this garden is, as the cliche goes,

worlds within worlds. 

I love butterflies..I mean really who doesn't?!? We humans see the beauty and assume it's for us ") 

Or maybe that was just me :P

Beside the garden was the butterfly bus where one enters the tagging station. 

The lovely Master Gardeners within demonstrated how they tagged a butterfly for the migration down to Mexico (teeny weeny dot sticker with a transmitter.)

These gardeners plant all the yummy food plants that makes the butterflies taste buds sing...when the butterflies are in the small egg stage they try to get them in tanks so that nothing..including strong winds ,rain, or the next door neighbors weed eaters can damage them and that they achieve the migration. 

It truly was amazing to see the bus/ incubation station.

The Master Gardener explained the stages and showed us how to tell the sex of a Monarch. The fella's have finer lines and a black dot on the lower wings..the ladies have thicker lines (because even in the animal world thicker is better ")

Due to so many of the habitats being sprayed with pesticides along with human encroachment we are losing our beauties...Not just Monarchs but Swallowtail and several others.  

How can you help ? Go Here 

We got to see what all the stages of a butterflies metamorphosis.

This wee little thing is the beginning egg

The wee caterpillar is actually teeny and greeny brown until it gets to be a around 5/8th of an inch then it goes to the yellow and black strip suit

Then they form the pupa to turn into a buttfly

The one on the far left is getting ready to emerge!

Tag waiting station

I will never look at another flower garden the same.

 Have a wonderful day!