Butterflies on Fuerteventura

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Wonderful Tardis, thank you 👏👍😀

[Archer]

Anyone know what these tiny butterflies or moth are? They are hanging round the geraniums over the last few days. Maybe up to 10 or more.
Never seen them here before.

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

They look like pina processional to me. If so, exterminate! And check your geranium plants for damage, see my thread on the subject.

[Archer]

Thanks Tamara. You are right, we looked closely and there is damage and some caterpillars! Extermination required before they wreck the bush further.
Thanks for the heads-up. 

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Seen a few Monachs around over the last week both in my garden and at Happy Plants on Sunday. I've got an army of Monarch caterpillars on one of my Milkweed plants. Apparently army is the collective noun for caterpillars! My army is 3 strong  , unfortunately the lizards have picked off the ones on the lower leaves  . I've got some small milkweed plants in pots so that in future, when the plants are a bit bigger, I can transfer some soldiers to them and keep them safe!

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

The 'army' have decamped to the adjacent hibiscus where they are busy creating chrysalids:

 

and there have been quite a few Monarchs fluttering around the garden, they've laid eggs on several of the smaller plants and they are starting to hatch into minute little fellas.



question: why are butterflies called butterflies? I think they would be much better named flutterbies!

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

I've got Monarch butterflies and caterpillars everywhere at the moment, eating me out of house and home!

 

I've discovered I have a problem with lizards developing a taste for the caterpillars! The pic above shows a lizard launching itself at a caterpillar that was choosing it's place to form it's chrysalid! This was about 1.5m high in a hibiscus!

[Can the Man]

Such is the circle of life Tamara.
🦎 eats 🐛 no 🦋 but something will eat the 🦎 probably a bird of prey 🦅

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Love is in the air yet again for the Monarchs - just hope they go elsewhere to lay their eggs as my milkweed have only a few leaves left between them. The plants do recover pretty quickly but they need a lot of leaf for every caterpillar!

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Milkweed:
I've gone away from growing new plants from seed as I'm getting faster results from cuttings. I'm taking cuttings from rooted cuttings and 2 weeks later I can take more and I'm potting up rooted cutting every 2 weeks - got a production line going. They root so fast in water!





 

At a rough count I've had 75 Monarchs successfully take flight this year and still a load of eggs, caterpillars and chrysalids! Could do with the breeding cycle coming to an end as I need to treat the original plants for cochineal. I've planted a bottlebrush and a buddleia as alternative potential nectar for the butterflies  - be interesting to see if they use them.