Are monarch butterflies poisonous to birds?
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Monarchs have an effective chemical defense. When they eat milkweed, they sequester the poisonous cardenolides (also called cardiac glycosides) in the milkweed. Cardenolides are poisonous to vertebrates (although maybe not to invertebrates, bacteria, and viruses), and most Monarchs face little predation from frogs, lizards, mice, birds, and other species with backbones.\n\nBut being poisonous doesn't help the Monarchs after a predator has already killed and tried to eat them. Monarchs need some way to warn off predators before they become lunch. Monarchs do this through their warning coloration, or bright colors (yellow, orange, black, and white). This coloration warns potential predators that the animal contains poisonous chemicals. Warning coloration may work particularly well in adult butterflies because the hard body and wings allows a predator to bite the adult, taste the poison, and release the butterfly without killing it. It is common to see butterflies with beak-sized sections gone from their wings. Large wings help the butterfly escape relatively unharmed. Since Monarch wings contain distasteful cardenolides, one bite may discourage further attack without killing the adult.\n\nEarly studies of Monarchs showed that when a blue jay ate a Monarch butterfly, it vomited shortly afterwards due to the cardenolides. That bird also learned to never eat another Monarch butterfly. Like this early study, most research about Monarch predation has focused on bird predation, especially on adults, and researchers have found a few species that eat Monarchs despite the cardenolides. \n\nBird Predators\n\nIn the mid-1970s, scientists discovered Monarch overwintering roosts in Mexico. As they began to study these roosts, they found extraordinarily high mortality due to predation. Although researchers had reported some predation in California Monarch roosts before this, such high levels of predation spurred a number of studies investigating the species that preyed upon the Monarchs, ways those species avoided poisoning, the patterns of predation, and the impact of predation on Monarch populations.\n\nAlthough many birds live in the same area as the Mexican roosts, only a few feed heavily on Monarchs. Of 37 bird species reported in the region, 25 never feed on Monarchs while another eight only rarely eat a Monarch. Two species, Scott's oriole and Stellar's jay, occasionally hunt Monarchs, which means that small numbers of birds visit the roosts irregularly to feed on Monarchs. The two remaining species, black-headed grosbeaks and black-backed orioles, are the main Monarch predators. These two species feed twice daily at the roosts in mixed flocks of five to at least 60 birds and annually consume several million Monarchs in the Mexican roosts.\n\nBlack-headed grosbeaks and black-backed orioles have very different ways of avoiding poisoning when they eat Monarchs. Grosbeaks, which eat the entire Monarch abdomen, are relatively insensitive to cardenolides and can tolerate moderate levels of these chemicals in their digestive tract. Orioles, on the other hand, vomit after consuming much smaller amounts of cardenolides. They avoid poisoning by not eating the cuticle, which is where Monarchs store cardenolides. Orioles slit open the body and strip out the soft insides.\n\nOriole and grosbeak predation follows several patterns. For example, grosbeaks eat fewer female Monarchs than orioles. Female Monarchs have, on average, 30% higher cardenolide concentrations than males. Females, therefore, may be more toxic than males. Since orioles avoid the cardenolide-laden cuticle, increasing concentrations may not affect them. On the other hand, females also contain more lipids (fats) than males and therefore may provide more nutrients per prey item than males. Scientists still have not determined the relative important of these two different forces (avoiding poisons and obtaining nutrients).
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I think we consider the idea of these researchers:\n\nGeochemist Christopher Romanek of UGA's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) can determine the telltale composition of elements he finds in a feather through stable isotope analysis.\n\n"He can analyze a feather and tell us if that bird came from either a coastal colony or an inland colony by the carbon, because the salt marsh ecosystems utilize a different carbon than do the inland systems," said Larry Bryan, research coordinator of SREL's wood stork program.\n\nThe type of nitrogen Romanek finds indicates whether a wood stork is eating top-level wetland predators, such as large bullheads and catfish, or creatures farther down the food chain, including minnows, bluegill, crayfish and tadpoles.\n\n"That's interesting because the higher you get up the food chain, typically, the higher mercury concentrations you're going to have in these aquatic organisms," Bryan said.\n\nFor more than 15 years now, SREL researchers have studied the endangered wood stork (Research Reporter, Winter/Spring 1996). During the past three years, Bryan has recorded mercury concentrations in wood stork nestlings. The concentrations amount to less than a millionth of a gram, but they are high enough for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to consider them potentially harmful. "Some of the nestlings could be at risk," Bryan said.
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Looks like a female golden crowned kinglet to me.  Scientific name is Regulus satrapa.
1180617
Guinea hens are often toted as tick eaters. Oxpeckers (those little birds you see perched on the back of rinos in the nature pics) are there partly to get ticks not that they won't eat flies too. I'd bet any insect eating bird and many other insect eating animals will happly add them to the menu without inquiring if they are insects or aracnids.
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This is as Serious Question, especially when tackling West Nile Virus, Malaria, Dengue, all vector borne disease.\n\nGoogle this on the web, there was a recent report about Rain and Butterflies (Slightly larger than bugs) They are also frighten of rain, as it is dangerous to them, the relative size of the water droplet, would harm them.\n\nBugs, usually try to hid from the rain, going into overhangs,  under large leaves, seeking shelter when they can find it.\n\nGood Question.  Next point, ever wonder where Flies goes after dark.
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there is a catapillar that looks like a snake, \n\nthe monach butterfly has a yucky taste...PLUS there is another butterfly that looks almost identical, so birds avoid it, even though it tastes better\n\nthe stick bug\n\nthe leaf bug\n\nbettle with VERY hard shells
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a disease caused by eating birds that have the virus
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butterflies smell with their feet
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You mean like a "murder of crows"? I'll see what I can find. Not everything has one.\n\n\nHere's a site:\n\nhttp://library.christchurch.org.nz/kids/animals/groups/\n\nIt gives several collective nouns for the words "insects" and "nightingales"; none for "lapwings", "puppies". "Dogs" and "horses" are represented.\n\nhttp://rinkworks.com/words/collective.shtml\n\nok, this last one has a "deceit of lapwings", a "watch" of nightingales; a "colony" of gulls;\n\nhttp://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/collective/r/?view=uk\n\nThis last site is the most comprehensive yet:\na "string" of racehorses\n\ninsects =\n"flight   \nhorde   \nplague   \nrabble   \nswarm"\n\na "litter" of puppies\n\nWHEW! I think that's everything you listed and now you have some good sources in case you have to find more someday!
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Moths are less colourful than butterfly, they are coloured like dead leaves or tree barks(not all of them). They can be known easily by looking at their antennae, butterflies have thin, thread-like antennae, while moth's atennae can be straight or feathery. Some of them have short, stabbing mouthparts Others, which have none at all, cannot eat and only live long enough to reproduce. Not all moths are dull in colour, a day-flying moth from Madagascar looks a lot like a butterfly but it is a moth.  Not all moths are vegetarian, several swallowtails suck up the rotting flesh of animals. Vampire Moths from Asia has a dagger-like mouthpart that it uses to suck the blood of its vintim, including humans.\nA wing of a moth and a butterfly are same, they revel thousands of scales overlapping each other, each has different sizes, shape and colour, this is what allows moths and butterflies indentify each other.\nMoths mostly go out when it is dark, to prevent predators such as birds from eating it.
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Yeah, not poisonous, ostrich is hard to crack.\n\nDidnt snakes lay eggs too? dont remem
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That sounds like a Monarch Butterfly catapillar. They feed on milk weed and migrate between Canada and Mexico.
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I've heard of attacks by mockingbirds and bluejays and have seen both of these birds swoop on other potential predators such as cats. They only do it when they feel their nest (with eggs or nestlings) is threatened. The solution is just to stay away from the nest.
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no poison, Anacondas are constrictor snakes, they squeeze there prey until they can't breathe and die, then they eat them whole.
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To attract mates and/or discourage predators (since many butterflies are distasteful or toxic). Other butterflies evolve the same colors to mimic the toxic ones and gain some small protection thereby.
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The monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are native to the Americas, where they migrate extensively. However, their migratory powers make it also possible for this species to be found in many parts of the world. \nThe monarch larvae (caterpillars) feed on milkweeds (genus Asclepias in the Americas, Gomphocarpus in Africa), and they establish populations wherever they find these plants. Monarch butterflies have appeared in places where milkweeds were introduced (e.g. Hawaii). They occur also in Australia, Europe and Africa.
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Because there is a risk involved in loving an insect that can potentially kill you with their poisons.