All are extremely important ways of helping the Monarchs. The tagging process, especially, is imperative to the statistical process about the migration numbers.
If you live in an area of the USA, where the Monarchs fly, I urge you to participate.
You can report your sightings of Monarchs on the Journey North website, you can note down tag numbers and report them, or you can get right into it and tag butterflies.
At whatever activity, your participation will be most precious indeed.
Monarch Watch has a great deal of tagging information - see HERE
Cape May Monarch Monitoring Project has a fabulous set up, so I commend you to follow their example.
Thursday, September 3, 2015 Watch for Tagged Monarchs Day 3 of the 2015 CMBO Monarch Monitoring Project is complete, and the status of monarchs in Cape May is unchanged. We're still seeing fair numbers of monarchs, but most are clearly the end of the last pre-migratory generation. Two females were laying eggs in one Cape May Point garden, males were patrolling flower patches in search of females, and the monarchs we caught for tagging we mostly worn and without significant fat reserves. Only those monarchs about to undertake long migratory flights typically build up big fat reserves. We've also had several female monarchs in hand that were obviously "gravid," with clusters of eggs obvious to the touch near the end of their abdomens. The weather has been hot with winds out of the south and southwest, weather that isn't conducive to migration. The heat is supposed to break over the next few days, and while the northeast wind that are forecast aren't the best for migration in to Cape May, they're surely better than the hot southerly winds we have been experiencing. Perhaps the coming weekend will see the first significant influx of migrating monarchs into Cape May. Read more about Cape May Monarch Monitoring Project, HERE.... |