The Monarch butterfly is also known as The Milkweed butterfly. The caterpillars of this spectacular butterfly feed on the milkweed plant, which is not found in the U.K. and so this remains an extremely rare visitor to our shores. Thankfully, this `flutter` is resident on the Canary Islands (except Lanzarote) and so, on my recent holiday there the skies were full of them.
Neither myself, or Lisa have ever seen these butterflies `in the flesh`, so to speak, and so we were completely taken aback at how big they are. The first one we saw I mistook for a small bird flying from a bird of paradise plant, how wrong I was.
In the Canary Islands this butterfly is polyvoltine, that is to say it has multiple flight periods and is continuously brooded, in fact, both the butterfly and the caterpillar is recorded in every month of the year.
What a stunner!
