Hooray! Congrats, Aggie! What a TREMENDOUS feeling it must be for you. I remember the first time I found some Monarch eggs on my plant. I almost swoonedÂ

Today I was outside close to the big batch of false nettles and saw a red admiral flitting around them. So I watched as she laid an egg on a stem, not the top bunch of leaves, and then I cut off the branch the egg was on and brought it in to raise - it is SO tiny! I stayed outside in the intense heat - why do butterflies lay most of their eggs in the middle of the day? - for as long as I could stand it, then went in, because she went under a magnolia leaf and hung upside down there for so long I couldn't stand the heat any more. Does anybody know how those awful braconid wasps lay their eggs? Do they lay them on the leaves or directly into the hatchling cat? Do I need to remove the leaves on the branch, get fresh ones and wash them good? I think I'll do that anyway, but I'm curious as to how they do their damage. I've brought in quite a few hatchling red admirals recently and found a lot of them had already been parasitized - I squished the cocoons or the tiny larvae, whichever was there. I also watched a cloudless sulphur laying eggs in my garden on the Cassia bicapsularis and the volunteer, weedy C. obtusifolia that's coming up in places - I left it because I know the sulphurs like it so much. This female was very pale, nearly white, so in that respect, cloudless sulphurs are apparently like little yellows. Sherry

Thank you Cathy...I hope it's a successful season for all of us! What an enjoyable, yet worrisome addiction! Donna

No good news to report. One of the three eggs had a tiny hole in it :(. I used a pancake turner and carefully removed the nest. Tossed the damaged egg and checked the inside of the box...no ants or wasps. I replaced the nest. I have seen both of the parent birds at the feeder, but never saw either of them enter the box. Will they return to the remainiing eggs after one of them has been 'killed'? Right now we have purple martins everywhere...eight pair have fledged young. Will they affect the nesting of the blues? Nest box is about 60-70' across from one another.