Monarch butterfly number 3 released

Last Friday we released monarch butterfly number 3 of our current brood, another female.

She emerged in the afternoon on Thursday in this mesh hamper.

The weather wasn't as warm as it was for the first two monarchs.

As you can see from the image above, it was a partly cloudy day, with periods of sunshine, temperatures around the low 70's. The late afternoon was lovely and sunny.

The butterfly took her time to fly off the hamper.

She actually moved her head from left to right, a few times.

After about 5 minutes or more, she started to flex her wings.

Then after another 5 minutes she stopped and looked around again.

I think that because it wasn't a very warm day it took the butterfly longer to fly.

But she suddenly flew up in the air, as we cheered, then landed high on the top a blackberry bush, where she flexed her wings some more for about 10 minutes.

She then flew to the Meyer lemon tree, where she rested then flexed her wings for a while.

And then she was gone...