Monarch Summer 2010 Wrap -Up From Denny Brooks

Word came Monday, 10/25 from Mexico that Monarchs are being seen in the sanctuaries. A long extended migration is coming to an end. A long hot and humid summer gave us a marvelous butterfly year. Other than the skippers the majority of common butterflies made an appearance. We had two uncommon visitors this year at Chippewa Nature Center, Buckeye butterflies made a prolonged August visit and we had American Snouts in July. Our monarchs returned to mid-Michigan in mid May, which is typical for early springs. We had a short period of limited sightings and then virtually everyday thereafter there were monarchs seen everywhere. As a whole the monarchs made a fantastic recovery from last year’s woeful numbers. The proof will be in February, when the various agencies do their winter sanctuary surveys.

Unfortunately, due to family and work commitments I got a late start on my summer projects. Here is a brief recap of the summer data. I surveyed 56 Monarchs: 28 female, 28 male. 51 were tested for parasites with 6 testing positive. I did 13 weeks of formal larva surveys for the Monarch Larva Monitoring Program on the Chippewa Nature center site, which yielded 11 eggs, 23 caterpillars, and 105 adult monarchs for 3148 milkweeds. I did another 11 casual surveys that yielded 26 eggs, 11 caterpillars and 141 adult monarchs for 1148 milkweeds. That means that we officially checked 4296 milkweed plants this year. We tagged 20 monarchs: 13 females, 7 males.

I only had five outreach programs this year, but I'm at 1767 people for my outreach programs since 2004. Despite having a cool windy day that was threatening rain we had a successful monarch tagging program on Labor Day weekend, at the Chippewa Nature Center. We found four adults and one caterpillar for the day. I have to thank Jamie Dietch, Stephen Wilson, Lucas Kraenzlein, and CNC educator Jeanne Henderson for there valiant effort to get the butterflies. We have been given the OK by CNC to do it again next year. So mark your calendars for Labor Day Saturday for our monarch tagging day.

Steve Griffin was kind enough to do an article about my projects and our CNC tagging day for the Midland Daily News.

http://www.ourmidland.com/news/article_eb0f6234-a31d-597a-8d13-918ae7348a48.html

I sent the article to the MLMP group at the University of Minnesota, my
primary agency. The article then went to Monarch.Net, where I was recognized
for the work that I do for my various projects.

http://www.monarchnet.org/

Thanks to all of you for your questions, comments, and support; it's greatly appreciated.

Associated agencies:

• Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, University of Minnesota: (http://www.mlmp.org/)
• Monarch Watch, University Of Kansas: (http://www.monarchwatch.org/)
• Monarch Health, University of Georgia: (http://www.monarchparasites.org/)
• Journey North: (http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/)
• Monarch.net: (http://www.monarchnet.org/)

DENNY BROOKS
Mid-Michigan Monarch Field Study
Midland, Michigan
43.36 - 84. 26
denbroo@aol.com