Date: 10/10/2012

Number: 1

This is our report for the 2012 season. We had a very wet spring, followed by a hot and very dry summer. The NWS declared a drought for the area on 7.20.12, but it was evident in June.Several of our milkweed plants died, very unusual, and the leaves of all of them turned yellow. We first notice the yellow streaks in the leaves in mid-August, and started cutting down our plants so that butterflies would not lay eggs on them as we were not sure of the cause.
We released 18 butterflies--13 males/5 females. The mortality for both caterpillars and butterflies was much greater than normal. Several small caterpillars died during 2nd or 3rd molts, or after exhibiting an inability to hold onto the leaf. Two butterflies were found after emerging with crumpled wings, as if they could not grasp the chrysalis when they emerged, and several other butterflies though properly formed could not fly when we released them. Karen Oberhauser suggested this might be due to the low moisture content of the plants due to the drought. Anyway, it is something new in our experience of 21 years.

We released our last butterfly on September 20, two weeks later than we have released butterflies in prior years.
Since 1991 we have released 662 Monarchs, 125 males/126 females. The numbers do not add up since in was sometime after we started rasing Monarchs that we discovered how to sex them.

Palmyra, NY

Latitude: 43.1 Longitude: -77.2

Observed by: Gary
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