Our second annual Monarch Tagging Day at Lower Crab Creek (LCC) near Vantage in central Washington, is now provisionally scheduled for Saturday August 15.

This is my best guesstimate as to when the Monarch population at LCC will be at its highest. The record-setting hot summer may have had an impact on the Monarchs at LCC and their environment, likely by altering the duration of immature development and the amount of natural mortality. We won’t know the extent of this impact until the final summer generation emerges which will be reflected in the number of Monarchs available for us to tag on August 15. If sufficient numbers of Monarchs fail to appear by August 15, tagging may be conducted on August 22 instead or cancelled. A final decision for August 15 will be made by August 12.

The extreme heat experienced for much of the summer has resulted in rapid senescence of the nectar plants that allow Monarchs to maintain their population at the Crab Creek site. Of greatest concern is the rapid drying up of nectar sources. A lack of flowering plants at LCC will cause rapid dispersal of newly emerged Monarchs. Normally, they stay at the site until early September. Currently, there are still some Milkweed and Purple Loosestrife flowers present but these are likely to be absent or much diminished by August 15.

 Last year most of the Monarchs we tagged were captured while they were feeding on flowers. Given the scarcity of flowers at LCC, bringing along some favored blooms (e.g. buddleia, asters, sedum, bee balm, blazing star, blanketflower, coneflower, sunflower, rabbitbrush) either cut in buckets of water or potted, is likely to help greatly in attracting Monarchs for tagging! So please, if you can bring any butterfly-attractive blooming plants please do so! 

I will email full details about the tagging day (including directions) a few days before the event. The attached Google Earth image shows the location of the site relative to the nearest towns of Vantage, Beverley and Mattawa. The day will start at 8am and run until early afternoon. You will need a butterfly net to catch the Monarchs but tags and instructions on how to tag will be provided. It should also be a good opportunity to get photos of Monarchs in their natural environment. 

In order to maximize our chances of tagging many Monarchs and to provide some fuel for their dispersal, I would like to ask all participants to bring some flowers with them! A Bouquet to say Bon Voyage to our Monarch Butterflies! Buddleia is particularly attractive to Monarchs so if we
could have buckets of buddleia blooms set up in a central area, I’m sure we could attract a good number of Monarchs at the site. Other blooms are also attractive including Liatris, asters, sedum, golden rod etc… As well as providing much needed nectar for the Monarchs, our blooms will also facilitate better opportunities for photography, observation and tagging!

Update from David James 8/7

Our second Annual Monarch Tagging Day at Lower Crab Creek (LCC) near Vantage in central Washington has now been provisionally rescheduled for Saturday August 22 or 29. However, the day (unfortunately) may be cancelled entirely due to lack of Monarchs….

My profound apologies for the uncertainty about the date but the Monarch population at LCC is proving to be unpredictable in this climatically-unpredictable and hostile season….details below:

Normally (ie in 2013 and 2014), the Monarchs at LCC produce a second locally-developed adult population beginning during the first week of August extending into early September. It is these fresh Monarchs that migrate southward for the winter.

As of August 6 there is no sign at LCC of this new generation of Monarchs. It is at least a week late. The population currently at LCC is aging and declining rapidly (down from 61 in 3 hrs last week to just 16 seen in 3 hrs this week). These individuals have been flying at LCC since late June and having laid all their eggs are now dying.

What has happened to the new generation of Monarchs? There are two possible scenarios:

1) substantial mortality has occurred to the Monarch eggs, caterpillars and chrysalids during July. The excessive heat (about 16 consecutive days of maxima > 100F) may have caused this.

 2) The heatwave coincided with emergence of the late June/early July generation of Monarchs and may have suppressed breeding and egg laying. My research on Australian Monarchs in the 80s showed newly emerged Monarchs experiencing hot (~100F) conditions delay egg production. Thus it is possible that LCC Monarchs also delayed egg production during the heatwave and only started laying after temperatures subsided (ie about July 11).

If scenario #1 is correct then we will likely not see a significant increase in Monarch numbers and the population will be too small to warrant a ‘tagging day’.

If scenario #2 is correct then the anticipated but delayed new generation should begin emerging about a month after egg laying began..ie August 11. As long as there wasn’t also significant heat-induced mortality, there should be enough Monarchs to warrant a tagging day on August 22 or 29.

My earlier concern of a lack of nectar at LCC for Monarchs still applies but I’m now hopeful that at least some flowering plants will be available during all of August. However, I still advise bringing your own butterfly-attractive flowering plants if you can.

Update from David James 8/13

It looks as if scenario #2 (as I outlined last week see below), heat-induced suppression of Monarch breeding, was responsible for late appearance of the new generation of adults. On Wednesday a 3 hr search of the site produced 29 individuals, almost double the number seen the previous week and more importantly a third of these were fresh, newly emerged Monarchs!

I will visit the site again next Tuesday (18th) and let you know on Wednesday 19th whether there are sufficient numbers of Monarchs at the site to warrant a tagging day on August 22. It is possible that in addition to delaying breeding in early July, the heat also increased immature stage mortality so numbers may not increase much further.

Flower availability is further diminished at the site and it’s likely that newly emerged Monarchs will leave within a few days of emergence.

Fingers crossed for a good outcome next week!

Cancelled with Regret – David James

With regret, I have had to cancel the Monarch Tagging Day planned for this Saturday August 22nd.

During the past two days I’ve spent about 6 hours at the site finding only about 6 Monarch per hour. Only half of these are potential migrants (worthy of tagging), the remainder are aging breeders who will not be migrating. In 2014 when we held the tagging day on August 23, the pre count was around 22 (mostly migrant) Monarchs per hour.

This is the first year since I’ve been studying the Monarch population at this site that numbers have fallen in August and as I suggested in previous emails I think this can be attributed to the 16 day heatwave that coincided with the emergence of the first locally produced generation. I have now had the chance to look at the temperature data in more detail.

A WSU Agweathernet climate recording station is present just 2 miles from the Monarch site and this showed that the average maximum temperature during June 26-July 10 was 103.1 F ! Every day during this period exceeded 100 F with a maximum of 109 on June 28.

These temperatures exceed optimal temperatures for Monarchs by a significant margin and appear to have had a detrimental effect on population development and survival. 

I’m sorry for this disappointing outcome but look forward to a better season in 2016 and hopefully a Monarch Tagging Day on the third weekend in August!