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The Wrack

The Wrack is the Wells Reserve blog, our collective logbook on the web.

Posts tagged monarchs

  • The King of Annual Family Migrations

    | September 4, 2013

    The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 9/8/13:

    Monarch on milkweed leavesFor the past 34 years, my mother has thrown a family reunion on Labor Day weekend. Thirty to fifty of us arrive from all over the Northeast and Canada for four days of feasting, toasting, singing, dancing, even a Geezers vs. Young Bucks softball game. Its an annual weekend devoted to celebrating, shoulder to shoulder, our lifelong ties and the continuity of our families and traditions.

    Meanwhile, for those who devote themselves to the monarch butterfly, there has been no celebration yet. This month, on this side of the Rockies, monarch adults from Maine to Alberta should be flying 2,500 miles back to a few square acres within the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site sixty miles northwest of Mexico City, where they overwinter from October to March. They should be, but they arent.

  • Winged Wednesday XXVI: Into the Wind

    | September 19, 2012 | Filed under: Observations

    Doing a butterfly sit instead of a bird walk.


  • Monarchs Rescued!

    | August 22, 2012

    Last week, a group of sixteen devoted volunteers set to work to rescue the eggs and caterpillars of the Monarch Butterfly. Within the next week or two, many of the fields at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm will be mowed.?Annual mowing of select fields is necessary?to prevent important field habitat from growing up into forests, and to combat the spread of invasive species. The mowing is done in late summer, after field nesting birds like the Bobolink?have finished rearing their young.

  • Operation monarch rescue

    | August 18, 2010

    With the crafts festival right around the corner, the time to mow fields for parking is approaching. Unfortunately, some of the parking fields are full of milkweed and monarchs. Fortunately, this is a good time to cut the fields to encourage strong regeneration next year.

  • Monarch update

    | August 11, 2006
    One icehouse chrysalis has become translucent and a near-adult monarch is now visible through the case. Thanks, Laura L, for the irresistible photographic update.…
  • Monarchs having a good year

    | August 7, 2006
    The Reserve's milkweed feeds multitudes of monarch larvae. The adult butterflies seem to be especially abundant this summer and signs that they're reproducing are commonplace. The clapboard siding of the icehouse has proven popular with monarch caterpillars. He…