When Do You Know That You Are Releasing "Migrants"?

[Kestrel]

Released my first Monarch this afternoon! A perfect female, who flew like a champion!
This was in SE Michigan. Any way of knowing if this gal will live out her life in Michigan, or be heading off to Mexico soon?
Thanks for any insights!

[Mona Miller]

http://www.uoguelph.ca/news/2010/07/u_o ... ch_23.html
U of G Research Reveals How Monarchs Fly Away Home

Okay, maybe she'll come visit me and Waystation #22 (Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, Vienna, VA).

[Paul Cherubini]

No way to know for sure. At a comparable latitude (42 degrees) in Pocahontas, Iowa the monarchs begin clustering the 3rd week in August which proves they are in reproductive diapause and will be headed to the overwintering sites in Mexico:
http://i959.photobucket.com/albums/ae78 ... ni2004.jpg
Pocahontas is a small farm town surrounded by GM corn and soybeans and monarchs are very abundant in that area: http://i959.photobucket.com/albums/ae78 ... hontas.jpg

The second week of August at 42 degrees N is kind of a transitional period when some of the newly emerged butterflies will be short lived reproductives and others will be long lived diapausers.

[Mona Miller]

According to the Monarch Watch website, your dates are good for latitude 49.

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/News.html
On August 26, Journey North will start following the migration and have weekly updates.

http://www.monarchwatch.org/tagmig/peak.html
Latitude Midpoint Peak in monarch abundance
49 26 August 18-30 August
47 1 September 24 August -5 September
45 6 September 29 August - 10 September
43 11 September 3 - 15 September
41 16 September 8 - 20 September
39 22 September 14-26 September
37 27 September 19 September - 1 October
35 2 October 24 September - 6 October
33 7 October 29 September - 11 October
31 12 October 4-16 October
29 18 October 10-22 October
27 23 October 15-27 October
25 28 October 20 October - 1 November
23 4 November 27 October -8 November
21 11 November 3-15 November
19.4* 18 November 10-22 November

[RozieMozie]

sweet ty Mona Miller, all i had to do is search for my latitude (43), and the dates on your chart are about what i was thinking from my experience

[Mona Miller]

Those dates can vary from year to year, but Monarch Watch has done a lot of research to estimate migration times.

I can't wait until Journey North starts and I get to hear about our Monarch butterfly friends travel to Mexico. I always love the stories of the people there.