Monarch butterfly Tagging

On August 26 Kelsey Moe, the naturalist for Fort Ridgely, Minneopa and Flandrau State Parks, held a monarch tagging event at Fort Ridgely.  About 20 people showed up to take part in this process.  Kelsey showed us how to catch them with a butterfly net.  The technique is to come from below when they are on a flower and turn the net quickly before they fly out the top.  Catching them with a net while they are flying is more likely to damage their wings.  It sounds easy but I missed many times or did not turn the net over before they flew away.   Still, I caught 5 and two of those in one swipe with two on the same blazing star flower stalk.  There were a number of middle school students who were much more adept at catching them than me.

We then brought the caught butterflies to Kelsey to be tagged.  She showed us how to hold them without damaging their wings.  Below is a picture of Kelsey gently holding the abdomen of a monarch that we caught.  She also said that if we hold the wings, we should hold them between our fingers as I am in the second picture.  We have less oil between our fingers than on our fingertips.  If you look closely on both butterflies we have already put the small circular tags on their wings. After tagging them we put them in a cage that Kelsey had brought.  This was so we didn't catch them a second time and cause more stress.  Kelsey ran out of tags after 35 butterflies were caught so we stopped collecting them.  She had ordered 100 tags and had done 65 at Minneopa already with a similar event there,