Celebrating the annual Monarch butterfly fall migration, the Kansas Wetlands Education Center will host a Butterfly Festival on Sept. 13 at 9 a.m.
“We have many activities planned for participants focused on butterflies” said Curtis J. Wolf, manager of Kansas Wetlands Education Center. “The highlight is the Monarch butterfly tagging, where we will provide butterfly nets for people to go out and try to catch butterflies along the KWEC nature trail. Tagging leaders will help them tag the butterflies as part of the Monarch Watch citizen science project.
Before being sent off to gather their butterflies, participants will receive information on how to tag a butterfly.
“The tagging process is pretty simple,” said Pam Martin, Kansas Department of Wildlife Parks and Tourism educator at KWEC. “After a monarch is captured, it’s sexed. Males have a scent pouch in the middle of the inside hind wing, which females do not have and the females have thicker veining. Several items are recorded: the tag number that consists of three letters and three numbers, date, sex, and where it was captured and released. The monarch is held by the wings, just behind the head, with wings together – the strongest part of the wing. The tag is peeled off of the sheet – like self-adhesive stamps – and applied to the discal cell – the largest cell on the outside hind wing. It is firmly held for 3 seconds and the butterfly is released.”
She said that the tagging’s purpose is to track the Monarch Migration and determine their destination. There are still many questions about how they are able to travel over 2000 miles, how they find the overwintering sites each year and how their homing system works.
“Other activities will include kids’ butterfly and caterpillar crafts, an insect zoo with various interesting live insects, a demonstration bee hive, butterfly and caterpillar photo boards, making milkweed seed bombs to disperse into a KWEC prairie area to seed it with milkweed, a milkweed plant giveaway, and refreshments.”
The festival is free and open to the public. For more information on the event visit wetlandscenter.fhsu.edu
The Kansas Wetlands Education Center is a branch of Fort Hays State University’s Sternberg Museum of Natural History and serves as a gateway to Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands area near Great Bend.