Did you know that when a monarch caterpillar transforms into a chrysalis, it spins around and its head pops off?
I thought I knew a lot about one of Maine’s most beloved butterflies. I’ve written about them before. But somehow I missed that startling fact.
While visiting Charlotte Rhoades Park and Butterfly Garden in Southwest Harbor recently, I learned that tidbit and more. I stopped by on the off chance that I might spy a monarch fluttering around.
Just one butterfly. That’s all I needed to be happy.
I’d been searching for a monarch for days, stopping by meadows and parks where I knew I could find a variety of bright flowers and milkweed, which is what the caterpillars feed exclusively on.
At Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden, I spotted viceroys, which from afar look just like monarchs. But they’re smaller and have slightly different markings.
In Bangor, I stopped by Cascade Park, Essex Woods and the West Penjajawoc Grasslands. No luck.
Yet I wasn’t exactly disappointed. When looking for something in nature, it’s important to keep an open mind and enjoy the process. During my hunt, I watched a variety of colorful dragonflies and busy bees. I stumbled across a small snapping turtle and a flock of cedar waxwings.
Several people have told me that they’ve noticed fewer butterflies this year, blaming the unusual amount of rain we’ve had. So I looked into it.
Butterflies do, in fact, lay low when it rains. They don’t appreciate getting pummeled by raindrops, and it makes sense. Monarch butterflies weigh about half a gram, or less than a paperclip. A large raindrop striking one would “be equivalent to you or I being pelted by water balloons with twice the mass of bowling balls,” Michael Raupp, professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, said in an interview with Scientific American.
Butterflies are also cold-blooded, relying on the sun to warm their bodies and allow them to fly. That’s another reason why you don’t see them as often during cold, rainy periods.
But the day was sunny, and I was determined to spot a monarch. So I visited the most butterfly-packed place I know: Charlotte Rhoades Park and Butterfly Garden.
I’d been there before, years ago. Yet I still wasn’t prepared for the kaleidoscope of colors. Flowers were in bloom throughout the garden. Crimson, orange, yellow, violet, magenta. All of the plants grown there are meant to attract and feed a variety of butterflies and caterpillars.
It only took me about a minute of wandering to spot my first monarch butterfly. Fluttering around the flowerbeds, it nearly tickled my nose on the way past. Then I saw another. And another. Running around with my camera, I was like a kid in a candy shop.
Eventually, I wandered across a well-manicured lawn to the butterfly education barn, topped with a copper butterfly weathervane. The doors were wide open, and inside, I was greeted by staff gardener Steve Joyal. He was cleaning out four enclosures that contained monarch caterpillars that were happily munching on milkweed. Also inside the enclosures were 13 chrysalises dangled from the plastic ceilings. Mint green and speckled with gold, they’re among the loveliest things I’ve ever seen in nature.
I was just learning from Joyal about how the caterpillars essentially decapitate themselves in the process of forming a chrysalis, when Debrale Murphy, a retired doula from Massachusetts, arrived with a special package. In a small container, she carried an adult monarch.
“Do you want to watch it get tagged?” she asked me.
Nature nerds can spot each other from a mile away.
Murphy raises monarchs at her home. And this summer, as she prepared for her annual Maine vacation, she realized that two of them were nearly ready to emerge.
“I had to take them with me,” she explained.
Murphy had been to the gardens before, so she knew she’d be able to release them in a great spot.
“There’s just so much food for them here,” she told me, motioning around at the many varieties of vibrant flowers. “This here is butterfly bush. They love that.”
I watched as Joyal carefully held the butterfly by pressing the wings together between his pointer finger and thumb. He then placed a tiny, circular Monarch Watch sticker on the underside of one of its hindwings. Each sticker has a unique number so the butterfly can be tracked.
“It’s a she,” Murphy informed me, explaining that male monarchs have two black spots on their hindwings that serve as scent glands.
I’d never seen a butterfly release before. I pictured people tossing them into the air in some grand gesture. But that’s not what happened.
It’s best to bring the butterfly straight to a food source, Joyal explained. So he carried the monarch to a butterfly bush and held her up to a cluster of tiny purple flowers. He then waited for a slight tug – the feeling of the butterfly’s tongue-like proboscis sucking nectar from a flower – before letting go.
“If you do that, nine times out of 10, it’ll stay right on the flower for a while,” he said.
She did stay, opening and closing her wings as she slurped up sugar. I lingered, too, chatting with Joyal about the amazing life cycle of monarchs. Each summer, they go through multiple generations, with the last built strong enough to fly thousands of miles of Mexico to overwinter — then return.
Before leaving the gardens, I wandered down toward Norwood Cove, where I followed a dirt path through a patch of milkweed. Searching the leaves, I found one yellow-and-black striped caterpillar munching away. It was a monarch, working toward its wings.
