Butterfly farming on a balcony - helping Monarch butterflies

Tiggy my cat is very interested in them but her fascination with flying creatures is different to mine and she caught a female Monarch some weeks ago. Luckily for the hapless butterfly I was quick enough and able to pry it out of my pet’s mouth and it flew away with just a few small tears at the bottom of its wings.

Tiggy also likes to catch and eat Ear Moths (Amphipoea oculea), named after a small ear-shaped whitish mark on their brown wings, but I don’t bother to rescue them because they absolutely defoliated my basil plants and then started on my chayote squash. The Ear Moth looper caterpillars are camouflaged in a green that matches the leaves and the female moths when they emerge from their cocoons do just what the Monarch butterflies do – they return to my balcony and lay more eggs. Besides being something for Tiggy to hunt I reckon they make good food for the pair of bats that I often see flitting by in the twilight.

The Curacao Milkweed is called Flor de Bandera Española in Spanish, meaning Flower of the Spanish Flag because its red and yellow colour match those of the flag of Spain. If we had more people cultivating Curacao Milkweed and if the authorities on Tenerife had this flower planted in more parks and borders then we’d see a lot more of these beautiful creatures. And growing this plant would be a patriotic thing to do!

I am doing what I can to grow more Milkweed but I just can’t keep up and have had tiny seedlings just showing their first leaves eaten overnight by the caterpillars. It got to the point where I was forced to make a long journey all the way down to Costa del Silencio to a flower border I know there where there are several clumps – enough to get a fresh supply of leaves for the large caterpillars I had and to release all the recently hatched small ones on to.

I had wondered why the Silencio plants were free of caterpillars but thought all the more food for the ones I was letting go. A few days later I found out why - I was once more in Silencio on my way to Flicks Bar and thought I’d see how the caterpillars were doing but was shocked to find I couldn’t find one. Then I saw a solitary wasp arrive and I realised – I had been supplying her with food for her own larvae and it was a real sting in this tale!

Footnote: Orginally published in the Tenerife Sun newspaper