Monarchs!

Monarchs!  We have had several bright Monarch butterflies fluttering around the garden and feeding on a number of flowers.   The coneflowers closest to the Milkweeds seem popular.  We suspect that these are 'our' Monarchs, though we haven't seen any actually undergo the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly.  We certainly saw enough caterpillars after leaving a few Milkweed to grow in front of the window.

Mrs. F.G. is the photographer and I don't think we've ever had better close-ups of Monarchs.

The bright colours and lack of tattered edges convince us that this is a newly hatched Monarch.  The migration to their over-wintering sites in Mexico is simply amazing, one of the very longest of insect migrations.  And it takes four generations for them to return.  The Monarchs that migrate south are not the same ones that migrated north, so they have never done this trip before, and yet they know where to go, to a tiny area in Mexico where most Monarchs ovcrwinter.

This generation will survive the winter in Mexico and then begin north in the spring - but they won't get very far.  It will typically take four generations, each migrating a little further, before they are back in southern Ontario.  How amazing is that!?  How do they find their way?

The story of the Monarch eclipses our excellent potato harvest, so you'll have to wait another week before I tell you about that.