It's a Girl!

Our first monarch has emerged - - and it's a girl! Early this morning, a pretty monarch emerged from its chrysalis and dried its wings to prepare for its first flight!

This afternoon, we had a chance to meet our new monarch up close, as we helped her perch on both a coreopsis flower and later a scabiosa flower to let her eat her first meal--delicious nectar! She was evidently not ready to eat yet, as we just couldn't convince her to nectar from either flower, but here is a photo snapped as she fluttered her wings to take flight from the coreopsis flower:

After we returned her to a cage for safe-keeping for the night, we noticed that she did sip nectar from the flowers we placed in a glass of water for her. Success! She will be released tomorrow morning to hopefully leave more eggs behind on our milkweed to start the next generation of monarchs!

Late into the evening, more and more monarchs began to emerge from their chrysalides. It soon became necessary to move some of the newly emerged monarchs to a curtain in our livingroom to make sure that everyone had enough space to twist and move to dry their wings without damaging the wings of others! One poor butterfly's wing was torn when another butterfly got too close and damaged it with its foot! We're not sure it will be able to fly, but are hopeful that it will at least get around well enough to flutter from flower to flower in the garden. Six new monarchs in less than 24 hours! Things are about to get very busy for the Monarch Girls!