Today's Report Includes:

• This Week's Migration Maps and Data
• Stay Tuned: The Monarch Migration Continues!
• News from the Migration Trail
• A Butterfly is Born: How Does it Get Out of the Chrysalis?
• A Bird Hatches and a Butterfly Ecloses: What’s the Difference?
• How Long Do the Monarchs from Mexico Live? Discussion of CQ #14
• Wanted: Your Monarch and Milkweed Sightings
• Year-End Evaluation: Please Share Your Thoughts!

Use today's data to make your own map, or print and analyze our map:

• Migration Map (and link to Real-time Map)
• Migration Data for Classroom Mapping
• Week-to-week Animation
• Year-to-year Animation (2005 vs. 2006)

Other Journey North migrations are coming to an end, but we track the monarchs until they've expanded across their entire breeding range. This normally takes until mid-June.

• Don't go away! We need your observations.

The monarchs still have a long way to travel.

The Monarch's Breeding Range in North America
(Stippled areas show regions of uncertainty.) >>

Another quiet week has passed. Only 8 new sightings were reported! (The others OCCURRED earlier but were REPORTED this week.) Sightings are at their seasonal low right now. We predict the monarchs will flood northward in the next two weeks. Let’s see what happens.

Some highlights of the week:

• First, a mystery for you to solve: Notice that 4 of the week’s 8 sightings are from the state of Illinois. They are from the same part of the state, and they are within 30 miles of one another. Look at the map and see if you can figure out why. (Here’s a clue: ogacihC)

• Not a single sighting has been reported from Iowa. Hello Algona, Kalona and Waterloo! We’re eager to hear from you!
• The northernmost monarch this week was reported from Toronto, Ontario. See the single red dot on the map at nearly 44N?

• A remarkable report came from 45N in Minnesota on May 4:

  “Three second grade boys sighted a monarch butterfly on the playground at The Blake School in Wayzata, MN during our noon recess time,” wrote their teacher, Ms. Patricia Arnold. “They were excited to report their sighting because we have raised monarch butterflies in our classroom.”

If this sighting is accurate, which it probably is, this monarch would be a very early arrival for the state of Minnesota. Yet before we can put it on the migration map, good scientific procedure requires further evidence. We hope the boys will get back on the playground and see if they can provide:

• 1) a picture of the monarch or 2) monarch eggs on milkweed

As good scientists, we have to keep an open mind and be healthy skeptics at the same time.

Have you ever watched a monarch butterfly emerge from its chrysalis? It comes into the world like a flower bursts from a swollen bud. This everyday miracle will take place millions and millions of times in the coming months, perhaps in your own backyard.

• How does the monarch manage to get out of the tight chrysalis that surrounds it?

Watch the video clip and see what you can learn:

• A Butterfly is Born: How Does it Get Out of the Chrysalis?

A Bird Hatches	A Butterfly Ecloses

Most people know that a bird hatches from its egg. When a monarch comes out of its chrysalis the process is called “eclosing.” Compare these video clips of a monarch eclosing and a whooping crane hatching. Then explore the similarities and differences between hatching and eclosing.

• A Bird Hatches and a Butterfly Ecloses: What’s the Difference?

Monarchs live for only 2-6 weeks during the breeding season, we pointed out last week. Those that migrate to Mexico and back live much longer. In the example of a monarch born on August 25th how long had the butterfly been alive as of April 25th?

• That butterfly would have lived 8 months, said Mrs. Nunnally's second grade class in Bedford, NH.

Thanks, 2nd graders!

Late April
Torn, tattered and faded
Photo: Jim Edson

Even if monarchs have already been reported from your state or province, we still want to hear from YOU when you see YOUR first monarch. The number of sightings reported reflects monarch abundance, so your observations will continue to be important.

• We can't track migration without your help! Please Report Your Sightings

Journey North
Year End Evaluation

Please share your thoughts!