Reader Alrich sent a photo of his garden, and your job is to spot three caterpillars of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus). The caterpillars aren’t cryptic but aposematic, and I’ve put a picture of one at the bottom.
These are Monarch caterpillars in our garden. One of them has pupated already. They better hurry because their migration is coming up!
Click photo (twice in succession, waiting between clicks) to enlarge, and good luck. I’d rate this one as HARD. I’ll put up the answer at noon.
Find three of these:
That was fun! It took a while to find the 3rd one.
I think I must have been lucky. The one that should have been hardest was centred in my vision on the first enlargement. The other two were pretty easy.
This was the easiest one for me! I am color blind, and I almost always blame it on that, but I found all three very quickly this time!
I found them pretty easily. We planted some milkweed last year but so far we have’t had any monarchs exploiting them. Maybe next year.
I’ll chime in with previous posters – this one was pretty easy. It took me maybe 15 seconds to find all three.
I did not find it hard to find the three caterpillars.
Was this garden planted specifically to attract Monarchs? I have one species of milkweed (Pallid milkweed, Asclepias cryptoceras ssp. cryptoceras) on my property but I have never noticed that it attracts Monarchs. I’m going to try to plant an area this fall with milkweed and nectar plants in order to attract monarchs. Have others done this?
This was interesting, What is the name of the bee-balm” that you have the leaves seem to be very dark color? I have seen several Monarchs this year what state are you in?
Yeah, easier than those pelicans. These caterpillars have distinctive stripes, which made them stand out.