Today has been awesome!
We spent the morning at the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Falls. I usually won't go to places where animals are captive but the butterfly conservatory does good things for butterflies including breeding them and releasing them. Apparently the number of Monarch butterflies in North America is declining. Today the conservatory was having a Monarch event which interested us especially as we have our little caterpillar friend munching away on milk weed leaves in our house right now. We learned about the life cycle of Monarchs and were able to see Monarchs at each stage of life from unhatched egg on a leaf to butterfly.
After a presentation we moved outside to tent where we were each given a Monarch to sex and tag with a sticker, record the number and then release outside so they may begin their migration to Mexico. As there are 4 of us we were able to release 4 butterflies. T1 didn't want to so T2 and I did it with G taking pictures. It was so cool. We already knew that males have a spot on each wing and we had 3 males and 1 female - the first female of the day to be released! It was a really awesome experience. T1 won't agree - he has decided he does not like butterflies at all and was constantly ducking when we were in the observatory and ultimately got creeped out so much he had to wait outside the doors.
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