No more stink bugs have turned up in my garden, so the outside caterpillars are fine, and the ones in the cage on the porch have started emptying their bowels all at once - yuk! It smells terrible! But I'm glad they'll soon be pupating. A female pipevine swallowtail was out in the garden today, and I've found two more batches of eggs - they just keep adding to the group. The pipevines keep colonizing more and more, so there are more and more vines with leaves for cats to eat, though, so everything's fine. The monarchs are growing steadily, though not as quickly as I'm accustomed to. I got this picture of a couple of them - I found some tiny red-spotted purples and spicebush swallowtail cats today. I got this picture of a hatchling spicebush swallowtail - Sherry

Lucky you Mittens! Congrats on having so much larvae! Maybe there is someone near by you an share with?? Your swamp milkweed must have gone to seed last fall and reseeded everywhere. The females do seem to prefer small plants. I've collected 6 eggs this year from a female who passed through over a couple days, and they were all on seedlings or small plants. I theorize that the foliage is more tender and palatable for a small caterpillar. Also, the low profile of the plant, especially if it is obscurely located, may shield the larvae from predators somewhat. Small plants also don't flower much, and the flowers attract all manner of wasps (predators). When a cat gets bigger, perhaps it will crawl to find a bigger plant?? Or, you can move the smaller larvae over to a growth tip, but first I would "patrol" the larger plants and remove all predators and other insects - spiders, earwigs, lady bugs and other beetles, ants, etc. and brush off aphids. Or you can bring them inside!

Susan, What I was suggesting is that if the sun angle and photo period was low enough to dictate going south to overwinter, sexual maturity could be delayed. Confusing maybe because not all individuals that start south go all the way to the overwintering grounds, nor do they all delay sexual maturity. But by default that suggests that the farther south the higher the percentage seen would have delayed maturity. Perception of terms varies widely, but... imaginis refers to likeness or appearance in Latin, as in like the adult stage, with no reference to sexual maturity at all. Since sexual maturity is only realized in the adult (imago, imagines) stage in lepidoptera, some folks might assume those terms mean sexual maturity, but that is not what imago refers to in Latin. I base my perception on the root of a term first, and past experience with what those with far greater knowledge than me commonly infers when using them. Which brings up... what I perceive is from long experience and use, but may not be current as I no longer keep up with changes proven out with new research and studies. So while I have a solid base, I can certainly still be wrong. Add that I try to keep my posts a short as possible (honest), so also do not fully relate everything that could be said, and maybe also assume some things are common enough knowledge that they do not have to be said again. It's always much harder to fully covey with the written word than in conversation. A lot of the information is new to most of the readers here, making it even more challenging to post enough while at the same time not so much that it may confuse them. Sandy, So you're saying do they choose cake or sex? With us it depends on the cake and the companion. and how long its been since we had either. With them it's written in their genes, so they don't really have a choice to make. ;) Back when I ran in the lep circles I often heard of Monarch's that were caught and released while migrating both north and south that were wearing wing tags. Some were reported to a species watch program, some were not. But at least some data gets recorded that would show a small part of where some individuals have traveled and when. But trackable devices... even with the huge inroads made in electronics I seriously doubt any satellite trackable device has been developed that a Monarch could carry. Even if they have or if on the "to do" list of some electronic engineer lepidopterist, the costs involved would be far to prohibitive to be feasable anyway. So I wouldn't look for it any time soon, if at all. Larry

I don't have any Monarch eggs (and don't have a camera that could get a good closeup of something that small anyway), but here's a link to some pics showing Monarch eggs. For those in parts of the country that get hot enough to have Queen butterflies, the Queen eggs look similar, so when the little caterpillars hatch out of the eggs, check with a magnifying glass for two pairs of little feelers on Monarch caterpillars or three pairs of feelers on Queen caterpillars. Here is a link that might be useful: Monarch eggs