Birdchick

And now a very jittery video of me releasing two monarchs that emerged from their individaul chrysalises today:

Three monarchs flapping like crazy, released into the wilds of Minneapolis.

I just saw a promo for Mr. Neil’s movie on tv. I can’t believe I know someone who wrote a book that’s being promoted as a mainstream summer movie. The “in a world” guy is even narrating the trailer. Ooooooo. Poor Cinnamon, first she’s losing blog time to birds and bees, now she’s losing her  [ Read More ]

I’ve been monarch ranching for awhile, but I’ve always wanted to ranch some swallowtails. Some species of swallowtail caterpillars feed on parsley. Earlier this spring, I found out that we had accidentally had a black swallowtail living in our apartment (we guess it came in as a caterpillar on some of Cinnamon’s parsley) but I  [ Read More ]

I just discovered that Non Birding Bill blogged a little about my monarch ranching. You can read it here. I’m so pleased he noticed.

Yesterday when I was trying to get ready to go to The Raptor Center, I noticed that one of my monarch chrysalises was about ready emerge. Wow, that was fast. Seemed like it was only yesterday this guys made the pretty, green chrysalis. Right before the monarch emerges, the chrysalis turns dark and you can  [ Read More ]

Five days ago we checked the hives to see if they were ready for some expansion. Olga was very ready and we added a third brood box. Kitty was about three frames behind, so we decided to expand Olga and give Kitty a few more days to build up comb. We took a look at  [ Read More ]

This post is going to get kinda gross. You may not want to read it during a meal if you have a sensitive tummy. “Sigh, will I ever be that big?” Last week, I did my segment on Showcase Minnesota about the Monarch Ranching Class that I’m doing at Staring Lake Nature Center July 7.  [ Read More ]

The banding has been on the slow side this spring at Carpenter. I’m not attributing that to an overall problem, after all we only meet on Fridays–maybe I would be posting something different if we were banding five days a week. Maybe it’s time to change net location–who can say at this point with just  [ Read More ]

I have a hunch that it’s gonna be a good year for monarch butterflies. I have seen quite a few already and I am seeing eggs everywhere! Way more than I did this time last year. In the above photo you can see two eggs on the young milkweed plants in the front. If you’re  [ Read More ]