February 23, 2024
Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle Page has been added to my website. This page can be accessed through my Butterfly Habitat Oasis Project page under the Projects tab.
An element of my Butterfly Habitat Oasis Project is that I provide a monarch habitat with a certified Monarch Butterfly Garden as well as a Monarch Waystation. Another component of my project is to photograph the monarch butterfly life cycle in the wild and in my butterfly garden. To show this I created a monarch butterfly life cycle diagram, as seen above, which is also on my monarch life cycle website page.
The monarch has four different stages of their life cycle that includes egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and the adult butterfly. Within the caterpillar stage of their life cycle, the monarch caterpillar molts 5 times before the chrysalis stage. The monarch caterpillar undergoes 5 stages called instars (1st instar, 2nd instar, 3rd instar, 4th instar and 5th instar).
In my new Monarch Life Cycle Page I will discuss all of the four stages of the monarch butterfly life cycle timeline as well as the 5 instar stages of the monarch caterpillar. In addition, I share many of my images of the monarch life cycle that I have photographed over the last couple of years from my backyard.
It is really important that we help the monarchs as this past winter, 2023-2024, both the Eastern and Western monarch populations have decreased at their overwintering sites in Mexico and California. So, it is very important that we plant milkweed as it is the only host plant for the monarch eggs and the only food that the monarch caterpillars can eat.
Thank you for reading my Field Notes Blog, and I hope you will share this post with others.
Let’s preserve and conserve our natural world. And let’s plant milkweed for the monarchs.
All the best,
Lori
Copyright © 2024 Lori A Cash Conservation Photography, LLC
Wonderful blog on the Monarchs. Great info and images! Great work you do!
Thank you very much, Katy!