Our friend and yours, Bob Pyle, published a book in 1999 called ‘Chasing Monarchs’ which documented his journey from British Columbia to Mexico to California, following the Monarch migration. I read this book soon after my arrival in the PNW from Australia where I had studied Monarchs for my PhD. Bob’s wonderfully entertaining and illuminating book stimulated a desire to study Monarchs in the PNW, particularly as it raised new questions on where our Monarchs actually go for the winter. Many of Bob’s observations suggested that some of our Monarchs may head in a more southerly or south easterly direction rather than the south westerly bearing that would take them to the California coast. Might some Washington Monarchs actually migrate and join their eastern US brethren in the spectacular Mexican overwintering colonies? Bob’s book also provided the only confirmed recovery of a tagged native Washington Monarch in California, yet there was widespread acceptance that all PNW Monarchs go to California. Bob’s book challenged this dogma and I was keen to accept the challenge! It took many years though before I was able to pursue the challenge and as with most of my accomplishments in entomological research, serendipity was the mistress that led me there.

In 2011, I received an email from Dr Tamara Russell, Clinical Director of the Residential Mental Health Unit at Walla Walla Penitentiary. She had seen my Facebook page on restoring native habitats and butterflies in vineyards and wondered if I had any project with butterflies that the inmates could become involved in. I immediately thought of Monarchs and the idea that we should mass rear them to provide enough individuals to support a tagging program. Thus was born the highly successful program of Monarch rearing in which inmates have reared approximately 75% of the 6590 Monarchs we have tagged and released during 2012-2014. Aside from the direct conservation value of adding more than 6500 butterflies to the PNW pool of Monarchs, the inmate led rearing program has to date, increased the number of long distance recovered tagged PNW Monarchs from one to nine. Monarch rearing is an extremely popular program in the Penitentiary with a long waiting list of ‘well behaved’ felons. Monarch rearing is being credited for improved prison harmony!

Releasing one to two thousand Monarchs does not automatically mean there will be lots of recoveries. We live in a sparsely populated landscape and the opportunities for Monarch-human encounters are limited to backyards, parks, gardens, along rivers and frequently visited natural areas. Most encounters occur when Monarchs pause for nectaring on flowers. This year we were fortunate in having two re-sightings of tagged Monarchs feeding on flowers along the migration route. One was spotted in a park near the Napa Valley, the other in a backyard near the San Francisco airport.

However, most of our recoveries are likely to come from overwintering colonies. There are challenges here too…. spotting the tagged needle in a Monarch haystack!

In the vanessid household (Jasmine, Rhiannon and Annabella all have Vanessa as their middle name), we are developing a new Thanksgiving tradition of Chasing Monarchs! Our migration with butterflies of passage is unfortunately not a romantic, leisurely Pyleesque journey stopping at lonely camp sites and visiting fascinating people. Rather it is a frenetic-paced, fastfood, Best Western road trip designed to fit into school and work schedules! We raised the sleeping vanessids at 5am, inserted them into the car and left Yakima. First stop Macca’s in Goldendale. (Editor’s note: Macca’s is Australian for McDonald’s.) After amazement at how the cost of a McDonalds breakfast has ballooned in 10 years, we shot over the state line into Oregon. All the vanessids are highly experienced travelers and think nothing of spending the whole day in the car entertained by books, video games and cds. Our meal and rest stop breaks were minimal and we hit the hotel beds at

Vacaville, CA before midnight. Next morning the girls thought California smelled very nice and they were happy to see leaves still on the trees. By early afternoon we were at the first overwintering site, Lighthouse Field, near the surfing beach in Santa Cruz. This is where just a few days before Mr 3524 was spotted. Local Monarch expert John Dayton managed to get a good photo of this male Monarch which I had reared and released in our Yakima backyard on August 25. We were hoping to see Mr 3524 for ourselves but despite binoculars, a video camera and my camera with a zoom lens, we didn’t spot him or any other tagged Monarch. There was an impressive number of Monarchs though, about 6000 mostly in a Cypress tree with a few in adjacent Eucalypts. We then moved on to another Santa Cruz overwintering site at Moran Lake, near a sewage treatment works. California didn’t smell quite so good. The Eucalypts grow very well here and we were thrilled to find an immense colony of Monarchs, festooning and dripping from the trees! Not quite

Mexico but the largest colony I’ve seen in California. I estimated about 20-25,000 Monarchs! Many were high up in the trees and the lighting was poor so it was difficult looking for tags and we didn’t see any.

Thanksgiving Day! We set off on roads strangely lacking vehicles, heading for Monterey and the famous Pacific Grove colony. We stopped at Monterey and found a small colony (about 800) in eucalypts along a bike path. Very high up again but no tags spotted. Rhiannon was nearly wiped out by a speeding cyclist so we moved on. We were lucky to find a parking spot at the Pacific Grove overwintering site. Clearly we weren’t the only people who wanted to spend Thanksgiving with the Monarchs. Impressive clusters and crowds greeted us. There were probably 15,000 Monarchs, half in view and half well hidden in a neighboring property. Immediately we saw tags, lots of tags, about 10-20 in each group of butterflies! But they weren’t ours, they were blue, ours are white. I was expecting these because I’d heard that the local museum was involved in an on-site tagging study. More than 2000 been tagged here a week or so ago, hence the high density in clusters! This is what it would look like if all our PNW tagged Monarchs went to the one site! It was good practice for ‘tag-spotting’. Jasmine and Rhiannon each spotted hundreds of tags. Jasmine swore she saw a yellow tag. Quite possible, if there are other groups tagging at cluster sites in different locations. We didn’t see any white tags though.

After a sunny lunch we headed down Highway 1 to Big Sur. There are a number of colonies along this scenic highway, including one at Andrew Molera State Park. The guy at the gate had seen Monarchs in the Eucalyptus grove earlier, so we set off on a half mile hike to find them. There is only one group of Eucalyptus in the park so it was easy to find, but it took a little searching to find the Monarchs. Tanya spotted them first, about 800, most of them 40-50 ft up in the trees. She started taking video of the clusters as I scanned with binoculars. Then she spotted it. A Monarch with a white tag! One of ours!? Very likely but it could also be one from the South West Monarch Study Group in Arizona. A number of their tagged Monarchs have turned up on the California coast recently. My binocular power was insufficient to read the tag as was the video and my zoom lens camera! I took some photos hoping that Photoshop might come to the rescue but it didn’t. Still, we had spotted a tagged Monarch that might be one of ours, a cause for celebration as we dined in a fan- cy restaurant and had an expensive bottle of wine! The Seahawks were beating the 49ers too.

The next day rain was heading to California so we planned our escape. First we would go back to Lighthouse Field one more time and maybe Natural Bridges, another famous overwintering site. After 30 minutes of scanning the dormant early morning clusters I decided it was time to move on to Natural Bridges. Rounding up the vanessids is never easy and Annabella had spied a friendly dog. Our precocious little west coast lady can never give up an opportunity to pat a doggie and its owners clearly thought it was a great thing for the dog as well. So my hasty retreat was stalled, but I noticed the guy was holding a large spotting scope. Not being a birder I have no experience of these things but I told him of our Monarch quest and how we had not been able to read the tag on the Andrew Molera butterfly. Within seconds the scope was out of its sheath and on the tripod aimed at one cluster of the Lighthouse Field Monarchs. I was truly impressed. I could zoom way up close to a Monarch wing and if there had been a tag there I would have been able to read it. Jasmine Vanessa wanted to take a look as I talked to my new spotting scope friend Barry. ‘Dad’ she exclaimed in a very loud voice. “There’s a tag!” No…. I said disbelievingly. The girl who struck gold for Dave Nunnallee and I by finding a gravid female Vanessa virginiensis ensuring its inclusion in our ‘Life Histories’ book, had struck again! Observant young eyes peering through a scope that had been focused randomly on a Monarch cluster had found a white tag! I could read ‘Monarch@wsu.edu‘ on the tag so it was definitely one of ours. But I could only make out one digit of the serial number, the last one ‘6’. It took another hour moving the scope around and adjacent Monarchs shifting a little before we were able to read the entire tag. Mr 6416 was yet another individual we had reared during August in our Yakima home. Its mother was a wild female I obtained from Lower Crab Creek in late July. The vanessids helped in the rearing of all the Monarch caterpillars in our house last summer from cleaning cages to releasing the tagged butterflies. Two Monarchs from the same brood, released at the same location within 4 days of each other had found their way to

the same exact location 688 miles away. Just as remarkable (to us anyway) is that we, the rearers and releasers of Mr 6416, were also the finders! Our experience at Lighthouse Field on November 28, 2014 was truly vanessid-induced serendipity. Without Annabella’s need to pat dogs and Jasmine’s sharp eyes, we definitely wouldn’t have found Mr 6416.

On the way home Tanya and I discussed the prospect of buying ourselves a spotting scope for Christmas! Another email arrived in my Monarch@wsu.edu account. Another tagged Monarch recovery! This one from 825 miles away in a cluster near Goleta, not far north of Santa Barbara! Wow! This one did not originate in Yakima. It was reared by the inmates at Walla Walla Penitentiary. They were naturally thrilled to hear about this. To date this is the longest con- firmed flight taken by a native Washington Monarch. How cool is that?

Part Two of Chasing Monarchs: The Vanessid Way will hopefully take place soon and we will take a look at the clusters closer to Santa Barbara this time. Our Christmas present and of course all the vanessids will be coming along……

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