It's a royal life....

The monarch is one of our few butterflies here on the rock. Inspired by the right royal goinga on in HBO's the Tudors I thought I'd share some life cycle photos. Life starts as an egg (you see that little yellow thing next to the caterpillar?) before hatching out into a, um, horny beast. Once it hatches it does nothing but eat and eat its favourite food....

...before sleeping it off for a while......

.....and then hitting the drinks....

...which leads to even more debauched behaviour.....

...and so the cycle begins again. For a more in depth treatment of the monarch's lifestyle with icky parasitic detail check out the Birdchick's blog.