Monday, June 10, 2013

For butterfly lovers (Part 4)

About butterfly tagging at the end of the summer!


This is Part 4 of a summer long project (in four parts) inspired by Flight of Butterflies, currently playing at the Ontario Science Centre’s until Labour Day weekend! 


If you've not seen the film yet, there's still time before Presqu'ile Provincial Park's annual Monarchs and Migrants Weekend (Saturday and Sunday on Labour Day weekend), hopefully your summer’s grand finale. 

After you’ve seen the movie and got the kids all excited about monarchs and the idea of holding a butterfly in their hands, tell them that you know exactly the place and time when they’ll be able to try this themselves and help with the research (now running under the name Monarch Watch).




The year we showed up for the Monarchs and Migrants Weekend was declared a bad one because it was so windy. Well, if this was a bad year, I wonder what a good year would look like! There were plenty of them in the bushes around the light house and everyone present got the chance to tag a butterfly

Spoiler alert! 
One very interesting thing we learned about monarchs migration in the Imax movie is that the butterflies we tag at the end of the summer are not the same as the fragile insects who would leave orange dust on my fingers when I tried to touch them in the summers of my youth.

Those born at the end of the summer are “super butterflies”, very sturdy, with strong feet sticking to our hands. They live longer. So don't worry, these butterflies won’t get hurt from being handled by your little scientists. All they need to de is listen to the instructions from the volunteers on site!


Also read:
(About the movie)
(About butterfly gardens)
(Scarborough Bluffs)








Note that weather allowing, volunteers also bag migrant birds during the Monarchs and Migrants Weekend.

While you're there

We brought a picnic (there were many spots by the water). We walked on the long boardwalk through the marsh. We did a trail through a forest in another part of the park (see the Presqu'ile Provincial Park link on my website). 


I saw many families riding their bike through the forest (there's a bike lane painted on the road).


On our way back, we drove through Kingston Highway and stopped to by some apples along Highway 2.

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