LOG BLOG

Turtle's head - view of orange kings and queens

I tried to sneak up on Old Dragon, the fairly big snapping turtle, as he basked on the fallen maple, but he flipped himself off (and me) into the pond as I stumbled clumsily through the brush, trying to maintain three points of contact whilst balancing upon dodgy ankles and holding a phone.

Instead I dallied at his vantage point and enjoyed the company of pondhawks, widow skimmers and frogs. Some of them enjoyed mine for a flitting second.

I noticed that the golden minnows we introduced were doing well, or at least had become a part of circular things here, eddies and swirls.

Limping back around to the house I saw that we have some swamp milkweed and a solitary monarch had discovered this too.

They are well known as great migrants, and even though they are always on the move it doesn’t mean that they are always traveling. Some don’t even bother going to Mexico anymore. They live and love where they are at the time. They aren’t great pollinators of milkweed, getting their nectar from other sources also, but they do like to lay their eggs on the plant. This gives the caterpillars some protection later.

There is a theory that because of their outer orange wing colour the danaus plexippus are named ‘monarch’ after William of Orange. He was a Dutch king of England, Scotland and Ireland before the Germans took over back in the 18th century. This was about the time that scientists had started to really categorise everything.

William was a Protestant that opposed Catholic emancipation and also orchestrated the massacre at Glencoe in Scotland.

To this day in Ireland there are orange marches to celebrate King Billy, whilst he is still reviled by those who wear the green.

The Danaus plexippus obviously enjoy the green but they also have eyesight that is acutely tuned to the colour orange. Well, they would.

I always thought that the word butterfly is beautiful in every language I’ve heard it.

Papillon, farfalle, mariposa, féileacán.

It’s vlinder in Dutch and schmetterling in German. I even like those.

The monarchs don’t live for very long, so no long live the queen, and this one is probably just stopping by as we only have one milkweed, but it’s one orange king that it’s always a pleasure to see on the green… and white, and sometimes purple. Now that is a royal colour.