Date: 06/04/2007

Number: 1

June 14

I saw another monarch yesterday June 14 at the same Yakima County, WA location at which I saw a female monarch ovipositing last week. This time it was a male, patrolling the milkweed. Fresh eggs were present on the milkweed indicating the recent presence of a female (s).

June 4

Yesterday (June 4) was not a good butterfly day in the Yakima Valley (overcast, some showers), thus I did not think to carry my net with me when I got out of my car on the way home to collect some oak and thistle to feed larvae at home.

I stopped at the Waterworks Canyon trailhead, just a few miles west of Naches in Yakima County and almost opposite the White Pass (Hwy 12)/ChinookPass (Hwy 410) junction. Plenty of oak..no thistles, but some milkweed, Asclepias speciosa.

As I searched for thistle, the sun suddenly made an appearance and there she was— a female monarch flitting amongst the milkweed, inspecting each plant and laying at least 2 eggs while I watched! Netless, I stood in awe, the first time I've actually seen an ovipositing monarch in WA!

After a few minutes she was gone, but a quick inspection of the milkweed revealed a good number of eggs; she'd apparently been there a while.

Early June matches my previous earliest observation of a monarch in the Yakima Valley and bodes well for a good 'crop' of Washington-grown monarchs later in the summer. Milkweed is extremely common in the Yakima Valley andColumbia Basin, so there is no shortage of host plants.

Had I carried my net, this female would have been the foundress of a multi-year rearing program I am planning that aims to produce significant numbers of Washington-reared monarchs for tagging. The southerly, autumn movement of Pacific Northwest monarchs is still somewhat 'mysterious' with tidbits of evidence from Bob Pyle's studies (and others) suggesting that some might find their way to Mexico as well as to the California coast.

A paper in the most recent issue of the Journal of the Lepidopterists Society provides further support for mixing of eastern and western monarch populations, by showing correlations between the population trends of each population. The only way to really show where WA monarchs go in the Fall is to tag largenumbers over a number of years. Breeding them is a convenient way of boosting tag numbers.

Forwarded for Dr. David G. James, courtesy of Mr. Don Davis.

Naches, WA

Latitude: 46.7 Longitude: -121.1

Observed by: David
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