Tale of Two Butterflies

This is a tale of two monarch butterflies. The center of attraction in the photo remained on the same purple coneflower for three minutes feeding while I took photos. Do you know how many photos I can take of one butterfly in three minutes even while moving position multiple times? Lots (over 50).

But wait, you didn't notice something else in the photo! While taking pictures another monarch flew through the field of view in the background. The orange and black blob in the upper left corner is that butterfly while on the downstroke of it's wings. It was a female flying to a milkweed plant to lay an egg on the underside of a leaf just as seen in "Flight of the Butterflies", a 2012 Canadian documentary on the near 40 year quest to discover the monarch butterfly migration pattern from Canada/U.S. to overwinter thousands of miles away in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico.

I observed the egg-laying motion of the thorax, but the female butterfly was deep in the weeds and I was unable to get in position to take a photo. However, I am imagining that sometime within the next few days a monarch caterpillar will hatch and develop into a superbutterfly able to make the strenuous flight to Mexico.