Butterfly farmers

My sons release a recently-emerged Monarch.

Butterflies have always fascinated me.  They are beautiful and graceful.  And then there is the wonder of their life cycle and metamorphosis.  When my kids were little, I read an education-themed blog that shared information about raising butterflies.  I knew I wanted to do that!  Probably more than my kids.  In the beginning, I bought milkweed plants (either the swamp or tropical variety) from a local nursery.  In later years, as I mentioned in my gardening post, I dug out some milkweed from a crack in the cement on the playground near our house.  The milkweed that grows wild in our area is prairie milkweed, as far as I can tell.  At some point, we had one of those cylindrical pop-up mesh butterfly habitats.  We also have used a variety of other homes for our growing caterpillars - mostly recycled plastic containers and glass jars.  When my kids attended a local Montessori school, I brought a few caterpillars into to one of my son's classrooms.  They lived and grew there in the butterfly habitat.  We delivered fresh milkweed as needed, and the kids watched the caterpillars grow and enter their chrysalis stage.  When the butterflies emerged, we released them on the playground.  My son's teacher called me a "butterfly farmer," which I thought sounded great.  Over the years, my kids and I have continued to act as butterfly farmers.   

A recently released Monarch lands on a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia).

One summer, we also discovered caterpillars living on the ubiquitous dill in our yard.  Through a little research, we found out that these were the caterpillars of Black Swallowtail butterflies.  We have raised quite a few of those as well.

A Black Swallowtail butterfly that we raised.

As most people know, Monarch butterfly populations have been decreasing because of habitat loss.  Because of increased awareness about this, many people are planting milkweed in their gardens and raising Monarchs.  In recent weeks, I have seen Facebook posts from several friends and neighbors who are raising Monarchs.  Some of them have been doing so for many years.  I would encourage anyone, especially families with children, to raise Monarchs.  It's such a great experience to witness the life cycle of these beautiful creatures and to know that you are helping them.  Monarch Watch is a great website to find out lots of information about Monarchs and how to help efforts at conservation.

 

Citizen science programs that monitor Monarchs, like the nationwide Journey North program and the local monitoring efforts of the Urban Ecology Center, also aid in Monarch conservation.

There are tons of great books about butterflies and specifically Monarch butterflies.  Too many to mention here, but I will mention one.  A couple of years ago I was teaching a poetry unit to our homeschool co-op, and I came across a unique and not very well known children's book about Monarch butterflies.  The book is The Monarch's Progress: Poems with Wings by Avis Harley.

 

This beautifully-illustrated book is full of poems about Monarch butterflies.  The poems take a variety of forms, such as haiku and sonnet.  I'll close with this acrostic poem from the book:

Worldly Wise by Avis Harley

Comma-size
And worldly wise,
The tiny caterpillar arrives
Eager to feed on leafy green -
Ravenous, greedy feasting machine!
Plumping up until it splits to shed
Its skin for one that fits -
Lively stripes grow bold in rows as
Larger and larger the larva grows.
And then - it ends this gorging bliss,
Retiring as a chrysalis.