Are you looking for new ways to help the monarch butterfly beyond planting milkweed in your yard? Monarch Watch’s butterfly tagging program could be the new opportunity you are looking for. Tagging migrating monarchs is a way to participate in citizen science to help researchers learn more about monarch populations and migration. It is also a great activity to do with children to increase their participation in the garden or to bring out your own inner child.
My fifth-grade teacher, Gerald Axelbaum, now retired, was always looking for new ways to bring his students outside. In 1992, he heard about a new organization called Monarch Watch that was asking citizens to help tag monarch butterflies in order to track their flight to Mexico. Gerald’s class had participated in previous research projects studying acid rain and really enjoyed becoming part of an international project; this monarch project sounded like it would also be very interesting. Monarch Watch offered an opportunity to help with the research of tracking monarchs to Mexico, giving his students an opportunity to work with scientists in other countries, as well as learn about the lifecycle of an insect.
After responding to Monarch Watch and requesting materials, Gerald set about incorporating monarch tagging into his fifth-grade curriculum. Using a sewing machine, the students made their own butterfly nets out of coat hangers and cloth. Gerald says the students “had pure fun building the nets.” Net building was also a lesson for students in sewing, measuring, and taking pride in their creation. Monarch Watch mailed the class a set of stickers to tag the monarchs with and asked them to record data on sex, date tagged, and if the butterfly was wild. Because he loves to teach science, Gerald encouraged his students to collect additional data like wind speed, temperature, and which direction the butterfly headed when it was released.
The fifth-grade class visited a nearby nature reserve to catch and tag their monarchs. Gerald remembers that when the project first started in the 1990s, it was common to see monarchs crossing the road in front of the school bus on the way to the nature reserve. Some days they would catch up to 120 monarchs in a day and they would run out of tags. As the years passed, however, Gerald noticed a decline in the number of monarchs available for his students to tag. It was very disappointing to have a class of excited fifth graders ready to catch monarchs but no monarchs around.
To increase the number of monarchs available for his students to tag and to learn more about their life cycle through a hands-on experience, Gerald ordered larva that could be reared in the classroom from Monarch Watch. Caterpillar eggs were also collected off milkweed leaves in the garden to be reared indoors. The students quickly became bonded with their caterpillars as they cared for them, fed them, and watch them molt five times as they grew bigger and bigger. The caterpillars must be fed fresh milkweed leaves, so Gerald spent each morning biking around the neighborhood harvesting milkweed from abandoned ditches and fence lines. However, a few years in to rearing larva in the classroom, tragedy struck, and all the larvae died from disease. Gerald learned there is a need to sanitize the caterpillars’ containers and the surrounding environment, which is hard to do in a classroom. “Sadly, there are so many ways for them to die before becoming adults, and the kids get bonded to their larva,” Gerald says, “it sometimes ends in tears.” But when things went well, students had the opportunity to witness their monarch finally eclose into an adult butterfly, making all the hard work delightfully worth it.
Monarch tagging is a great activity to do with kids. It is captivating to let a monarch sit on the palm of your hand waiting for it to take flight after receiving a tag. This is also a wonderful time for photos. Speaking about his experience with his students over the years, Gerald says that “any touch of an insect makes them more familiar and comfortable” creating more kids have a lifelong connection to insects. The activity can be very exciting but is also a great responsibility, for the child must be gentle with each insect. Monarchs are not easy to catch, and when you do have one in your net, if you are not patient, it is likely to fly off before you get a chance to tag it.
“There is a lovely freedom children experience as they run across the prairie with a net after a monarch,” says Gerald. They are hard to catch, and if you open the net without caution, they fly out and are gone. Catching a monarch takes skill. Gerald recommends a certain method to be the most successful at catching them. “Be like a batter; be cocked and ready to swing,” says Gerald. “Wait for a monarch to perch on a flower to sip nectar. Swing your net well past the flower the butterfly is perched on, to get the butterfly all the way to the back and center of the net, keep the net moving to keep the butterfly inside. Then flip your wrist to fold the net over, closing off the opening, and gently untangle from any plants. Then hold the net up to the sunlight to find the butterfly, and while gently squeezing the wings closed from the outside of the net with one hand, reach inside with your other hand to gently grasp it and remove it, always gently pinching the leading edge of the wings together so it cannot fly or hurt itself.” You can hold them safely by the wings, even though they will lose a few scales, but not a damaging amount. You only get one chance to catch them; if they escape, they are off, flying up into the sky.
Gerald describes the 30 years he has spent with his students tagging monarchs as magical, thrilling, and exciting. This is a great growth opportunity for children. One of the great resources of the Monarch Watch program is that you can see if any of your tagged monarchs has been recovered in Mexico. Gerald is proud that, over the years, twenty or so of his students’ monarchs have been recovered in Mexico, completing their great migration.
Whether you are a child or not, monarch tagging can be thrilling and engaging. If you plant milkweed in your garden, the monarchs will come. Be ready, and when you see the monarch butterflies traveling south in August and September, have your tags ready. You can preorder your tags from Monarch Watch in the spring, and they will be mailed to you in late summer. Order early because supplies sometimes run out. While we impatiently await the return of the monarchs, we can also watch their progress on the Journey North website and report any monarchs arriving in our gardens.
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