Our very first Monarch butterfly! (March 1)

This was so super exciting!  I walked out to the garden to check on the chrysalis (this was 10 days ago) and I didn't even notice that the butterfly had hatched!  I brushed up against the caterpillar/butterfly cage and that was when I heard some fluttering:

And as if I couldn't believe my eyes, I even had to check the chrysalis.  Yup, it's our first butterfly!!!

I had no idea how long it had hatched as you have to wait at least 2 hours for the butterfly to dry up its wings.  Well, I figured since it was pretty late in the morning, the poor butterfly had probably been out of its cocoon for a while now and was probably hungry.  So I took it across the house towards the front yard:

The boys were on break so we were able to set it free together:

What an exciting day!!!

It took a little enticing but once the butterfly smelled the Lantana flowers, it was definitely happy!

And based on my research - the visible black dot on each side of its wings, this Monarch is a boy! 

It's so neat to be able to get so close and personal to the butterfly and watch it feed. Thumbs up from Charlie:

Here's a video of the butterfly's feeding frenzy.  And you can totally see the proboscis of the butterfly going in and out of the flower to feed on the nectar:

 

Here's another video as it briefly flew to another flower:

 Yup, we are standing close alright :-)

I'm glad our "first born" had lots of flowers to feed on, on Day 1 of its life (thanks for our neighbor's flowers!):

I was hoping to be able to tag this butterfly but the website I found ran out of tags. And I think those born during this time of the year don't migrate.  Supposedly they will only live from 2-6 weeks!?

With how weird the weather pattern has been around the US lately, I think I would be confused if I were a Monarch butterfly.  So I'm not exactly sure where our baby Monarch falls in this map as the butterflies are suppose to travel north in the Summer and back towards the coast during the Fall. And it's March now... hmmm.... the mystery continues!

In the meantime, we still have 2 more chrysalis that haven't hatched yet.  I thought we would have 2 new butterflies by now but the longer they don't show up, the more worried and stressed I am:

The chrysalis are still green so at least that's a good sign.  You can see those orange and black wings on the inside.  Surely they will become butterflies any day now!  It has been super windy and cold at night. I wonder if I should be bringing them into the house, but we shouldn't mess with Mother Nature too much? I guess we will just continue to wait and see.