Where do our Butterflies Go?

[jeri]

Hi - I have raised and released Many monarchs in the past. I live in the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado. We did this as a school project and did for approximately 5 years. Each year I looked to see where our beautiful friends went but none seem to have been found. I am wondering if anyone knows where the butterflies from our area goes. Thanks in advance. Jeri

[Jim]

Hi Jeri - welcome to the forums!

In answer to your question about where your monarchs go, it all depends on when you are raising and releasing them. If you are doing this in the summer, your monarchs should stick around as a part of the local population - as long as there are plenty of nectar sources and milkweed for the females to use for egg-laying.

If you are raising and releasing your monarchs late in the fall they could be migratory and they should be heading to Mexico with the rest of the eastern North American population. The only way to try and find out where they are going is to tag a bunch of them before you release them and hope you have some recovered further south.

It looks like San Luis Valley is located just to the east of the Continental Divide so you could order a tagging kit from Monarch Watch and participate in our 2004 fall tagging program. If you want to try this, more information is available on our site at

http://www.MonarchWatch.org/tagmig/

and an order form is available at

http://www.MonarchWatch.org/order/

You should concentrate your tagging efforts during the peak migration in your area, which you can look up at

http://www.MonarchWatch.org/tagmig/peak.html

Hope this helps!

[jeri]

Yes - We were releasing in September. We tagged for about 4-5 years and would check and no tags were ever found. We were very discouraged. Then there was an extreme drop off of monarch catapillars in our area. Even this year we have seen very few. We though they should go to Mexico but since no tags were ever located we did not know.

Thanks for your quick reply. Jeri

[Mona Miller]

Colorado Monarch can go to Mexico or the Gulf of Mexico. Or some of the little buggers may end up in California. Then, there are unknown locations where they winter over in Mexico and the US.

http://homepage.smc.edu/sakai_walter/Mo ... /sites.htm

Monarch are super bugs and unlike other butterflies. I think they are more like birds that migrate long distances to survive. Their wing patterns even look like feathers.