A Monarch Named Henry
March 12, 2021 12:27 PM   Subscribe

Meet Henry, "an unexpected guest." Make that "an early, unexpected guest who was given a warm welcome and an even warmer send-off." Henry is a Marin County winter monarch butterfly.

In December 2020, the US Fish and Wildlife Service agreed that the monarch butterfly should be listed under the Endangered Species Act, but said that other priorities preclude that for now. In more encouraging news, on January 12, 2021, entomologist David James, Director of the Washington State University Monarch tagging program, posted a graph "showing the number of observations of monarch larvae/pupae (as recorded on I-Naturalist) in the San Francisco Bay area during November/December for every year since 2015. The graph showed a huge (>5X) increase in observations in 2020 compared to each of the the previous 6 years." On January 21 he posted that "Reports continue to come in on monarch breeding activity in the San Francisco Bay area. In fact, there appears to be a flush of new adults and egg laying."
posted by Lexica (7 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is great! Thank you for posting! Another little bit of evidence that it may actually be everyday people, growing wildlife friendly gardens in their back yards who save entire species. What we do as individuals matters!!! Please everyone, don't use any pesticides or herbicides in your gardens and please consider planting native plants alongside your other favorites. You can/will save lives.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 2:30 PM on March 12, 2021 [4 favorites]


After three years, I finally managed to coax bees into my garden by planting rosemary. It's a small thing, but providing them forage is one more thing i can do to help.
posted by SPrintF at 4:27 PM on March 12, 2021 [4 favorites]


How on Earth do you tag a butterfly!?
posted by fizban at 1:40 AM on March 13, 2021


SPrintF, I’ve got lots of rosemary, but what my local bees seem to really love is massive amounts of mint that I allow to flower.
posted by MexicanYenta at 1:42 AM on March 13, 2021


How on Earth do you tag a butterfly!?

You touch it and yell "It!' and then run away?
posted by hippybear at 7:51 AM on March 13, 2021 [3 favorites]


My memory is that it's small serial codes on stickers that are put on the wing, let me see if I can find a source... yup! You have to be careful about where you put the sticker to not interfere with flying, but it doesn't otherwise hurt them.
posted by tavella at 11:57 AM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]


Boy, I sure hope that they really have been breeding because as of right now zero monarchs in Pacific Grove, one of their primary wintering over spots. It's something that has never happened before and it is considered a very bad sign for the species.
posted by rednikki at 2:36 PM on March 13, 2021 [1 favorite]


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