I say 'unusually' because I have raised a lot of Monarchs and not only was this one's length of time in the chrysalis, unusually long, but I have never yet seen one emerge in the evening.
Their timing always impresses me, in that they usually emerge in the morning and have flown off by mid-late afternoon.
Oh well, this has been the season of 'unusually' for the Monarchs so I took it in my stride.
Our last little traveller emerged at 10pm on Friday night. On Saturday I took her outside for a little photo shoot in the sun, then placed her on a foam stick on our deck to gain strength and fly off.
But no, she had other ideas and wasn't going to do that. Rather, she stayed on the foam stick all day as if to say 'not ready yet'.
At 5pm it was beginning to get cold and so I took her back inside the house.
This morning I put her back outside in the sun and within 30 minutes she had flown off to her butterfly life.
So that's it for another season.
In a few weeks time we'll be seeing the Monarchs flying again, as our warm weather ramps up.
Here are the pics from our little photo shoot yesterday. Isn't she just so beautiful?