Monarch butterflies in Southern California begin their northward migration away from overwintering sites in late February to March. As warmer weather arrives, they break from their clustered, dormant state to seek milkweed for breeding, typically dispersing from coastal groves by early spring.
That's the Google AI overview for monarch butterflies in SoCal. I was going to get into a longer discussion but I'm tired. I've walked everyday from January 23rd through today, all of this is still going on and to add some additional insect fear, there was this little lady to deal with on Thursday after my mis-IDing her until Wednesday evening and asking Google search by image what her story was.
The photo was taken just above my kitchen stove. She was coming in at night thorough the vent of a Nutone exhaust fan above the stove. Notice the little orange hourglass on her belly? She's a Latrodectus geometricus, commonly known as the brown widow and is one of the widow spiders in the genus Latrodectus. As such, it is a 'cousin' to the more infamous Latrodectus mactans (black widow). Their bites, though painful, are not considered to be dangerous. They became established in Southern California in early 2000 and they are invasive. This information called for it's extermination (death by pump spray hairspray) on Wednesday, January 28th. On Thursday I took the faceplate off the Nutone, unplugged it and went to work on the fan, its housing and everything in and around the stove/ovens with a Wagner steam cleaner.
Okay... wasn't gonna write much but as you can probably tell, most of the above was copy/paste.
Here are some photos from this weekend’s walks.
Saturday, January 31
Monarch
Monarch on Asclepias curassavica (Tropical Milkweed) it’s a primary reason they’ve stopped migrating. Since the Tropical variety doesn’t die back in our mild winters like the native A. fascicularis, it allows the OE parasite (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha) to build up on the leaves, which can eventually weaken the very population it's feeding.
A West Coast Lady (Vanessa annabella). An open and shut case.
Hardy Ice Plant (Delosperma cooperi).
Monarch butterfly. The plant is mule fat (Baccharis salicifolia).
Coming in from a distance I thought it was a flock of bush tits because that's how bush tits travel but instead it was about 10-12 Lesser Goldfinches. I've never seen that. Of course I didn't get any good pictures. The plant is prostrate rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis).
Sunday, February 1st (today)
Monarch in a coastal tea tree (Leptospermum laevigatum), an evergreen shrub or small tree native to southeastern Australia. I misID'd this shrub last week as an Eremophila.
Also on the only few branches showing flowers so far on the coastal tea tree was this Red Admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta).
This is one of the hawks that was being challenged by four ravens in this post from last week. It appears it has some tail feather damage from some incident. I'll keep watching for it.
Watcher of the skies, watcher of all
His is a world alone, no world is his own
He whom life can no longer surprise
Raising his eyes, beholds a planet unknown
