Hunting Monarch Butterflies

By Donna Barski

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  Photo: Donna Barski

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  Photo: Donna Barski

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  Photo: Donna Barski

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  Photo: Donna Barski

As September 2025 approached, I began to feel the anticipation of what was to come. This year, I would net and tag monarch butterflies for Monarch Watch, an organization whose mission is to better understand how to sustain the monarch migration. My goal seemed straightforward: I would capture, tag, and release twenty-five monarch butterflies on their way to Mexico. 

A fifty-acre field, filled with various sun-loving wildflowers, is just across the road from my woodland home. Five interconnecting trails give me access to this extensive hillside meadow. For years I have observed and photographed various species of butterflies, bees, and birds in this habitat, as well as cottontail rabbits, woodchucks, foxes, coyotes, and white-tailed deer. Field birds always capture my attention, especially the strikingly patterned black and white bobolinks, South American migrants whose population is dangerously low due to habitat loss.

Whenever I enter this opulent ecological haven, now a magnet for a variety of plants, insects and other wildlife, I can’t avoid remembering when it was a cultivated cornfield, alternating every few years with hay that was harvested at least twice each summer. Thirty-five ago, it was nearly devoid of birds as well as many of the insects they would have fed upon, and with no common milkweed anywhere in sight. Nor were there bees going about their business pollinating flowers that depended on them. For those wildflowers that somehow managed to sprout, or the various birds that may have built their nests on the ground, the sharp blades of the mower or harvester would soon be along to whack away at the monocrop.

On the first of September, as I left the wooded area below and headed up to the meadow, the familiar smell of ripening apples lying on the ground near their tree reminded me that autumn was less than a month away. Now, it was the monarchs who commanded my attention. Near the end of summer, the fourth-generation of Eastern monarch butterflies from southern Ontario, Quebec, and Northern U.S. begin their migration south. A steady succession of them will increase in number as they pass through my area in search of nectar-rich flowers along roadsides, in gardens and fields, gathering in groups at night to roost in trees. 

This generation of monarchs are long-lived, and in sexual diapause (suspension of their reproductive behavior). They are more robust than their progenitors of the previous three generations, and they are genetically “programmed” to find their way to a specific forest in Mexico. In March, males and females mate and begin a northward migration, repeating a remarkable life-cycle perfected by millions of years of evolutionary process. 

As I approached the field’s labyrinth of trails, the scene literally took my breath away. The field was ablaze with goldenrods. Nestled among these bright yellow-and-orange blooms were various species of purple, lavender, blue and white asters, all wafting their subtle summer fragrance in the gentle breeze. The buzzing of thousands of bees reverberated around me. I gazed upward at the bright blue sky, adorned with puffy clouds, and there, soaring on a thermal, was a hawk. As I watched, I felt strangely akin to this sky-hunter, though in my case, my quarry would be released only moments after it was caught. 

I could see several monarchs sailing about or lazily lingering over their floral selections, and I knew their internal clocks would be ticking. These intrepid voyagers were only the leading edge of what would follow. Their numbers would increase daily, peaking in about two weeks. For those who were to come later, there would be no time to lose, as the deadly cold would soon be nipping at their wings.

Though it was late in the afternoon, I hesitated for a moment to reflect on the beautiful scene in front of me, now humming with a myriad of invertebrates. I recalled a quote from E.O. Wilson: “I turned to the teeming small creatures that can be held between the thumb and forefinger: the little things that compose the foundation of our ecosystems, the little things, as I like to say, who run the world.”  

Just then, I spotted the flitting movements of one of my “prey” heading toward me. As it meandered closer, I resisted the temptation to swing my net. The monarch’s quick reflexes are finely tuned to evade danger. Netting is safer and more likely to succeed while the butterfly is settled on a flower, focused on fueling up. Surely, I thought, monarchs would just as regularly alight on flowers growing at the trail’s edge as they would anywhere else, providing me with convenient opportunities to net them without having to wade into the tall dense foliage. 

I walked the trails for two hours. Monarchs came and went, yet I remained without a catch! The sun’s angle was now casting shadows across my path. The butterflies were gradually disappearing from the open field, flying to their overnight communal resting place in the woods nearby. Disappointed, I turned to go.

But just as I rounded a corner, only a foot from the trail’s edge, a monarch settled on a goldenrod. I nervously approached, ever so carefully, and with a quick upward swish and flip of my net, I “bagged” my first of the season, a robust male. In less than two-minutes, he was airborne again, sporting a tiny round sticker with his very own identification number. 

The Search for monarchs intensifies

I was unable to return until a few days later, and by now realized that, if I ever hoped to net twenty-four more monarchs during their stopovers, I would need to adopt the technique of a stealthy huntress, leave the trail, and weave my own path through the waist-high field. 

Within minutes, I spotted my first monarch of the day fueling up a few yards from the trail’s edge. I furtively waded in and the bees moved aside, yet the monarch remained on the flower. When I was close enough, I placed the net just inches below her, and a second later, she was fluttering in my net, a beautiful female. 

I managed to net three more, and for the next ten-days, added eight more to my list. Nevertheless, I was beginning to feel nervous, since it was by now mid-September and I still had twelve tags to go in order to meet my goal. 

The daily density of migrants was now in decline, and with each day, fewer and fewer stragglers were to be seen. I could only spend a couple of hours in the field on most days. Consequently, as my quarry became more elusive, my searching became more intense. As the days passed, I counted myself lucky to net even one monarch a day, until, on the final day of the month, one tag still remained.

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  Photo: Donna Barski

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  Photo: Donna Barski

The goldenrod flowers were now going to seed. Fortunately, New England asters were still fresh and full of nectar. I searched the sky and field with self-imposed desperation. But on that final day, there were none to be seen. With the light waning, I became reconciled that my last remaining tag would not be carried aloft on the resplendent wing of a butterfly, at least not this year.

As I turned to go, I scanned the field for one last time, and to my exaltation, there was a monarch, casually sipping from a deep purple aster, well beyond my reach. I gripped my net, and slowly moved into the waist-high field. My apprehension increased the closer I approached, and sure enough, just as I came within range, the butterfly took to the air. It landed on another flower a few yards away. I moved in her direction, but was left holding my empty net once more as she launched herself to another bloom yet farther away. By now, my heart was beating furiously. To make matters worse, the sun, which was now lower in the sky, was behind her, making it difficult for me to keep her in view.  But on this third flower, she dallied just long enough for me to approach and place my net under her, and  with a swift upward thrust and flip, I had her!

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  Photo: Donna Barski

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  Photo: Donna Barski

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  Photo: Donna Barski

Exhilarated, I made my way out to the edge of the field and sat down on the grassy trail to regain my composure. Somehow, I had met my goal.

Holding the net closed with one hand, I reached inside my back-pack and retrieved the clipboard and tag sheet. I slid my hand into the net and carefully lifted her out, gently holding her wings together with my index finger and thumb. After applying the small round sticker to her upper wing’s underside, I let go, and watched as she ascended, up and away from me, out of sight, free to continue her incredible journey. 

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  Photo: Donna Barski

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  Photo: Donna Barski

I filled in line 25 on my data sheet, and sat in the stillness for a few more minutes to reflect on my experience of the past month: the exquisite splendor of the field, and how it had been “reborn” by simply giving it peace, letting nature take its course. I marveled at the many creatures who now know this field as their home, as well as those who only visit, and how I had come face to face with a few of the “little things that run the world,” having held them in my hand for a priceless moment, knowing that each had within it an ancient awareness sufficient to enable it to traverse a continent!

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A regular contributor to the Land Conservancy's blog, Donna Barski is a retired teacher who lives in Arcade, New York and has an Environmental Studies degree and a life-long interest in nature.

Do you have a story or idea you would like to share with the Land Conservancy community? Email Kyle Semmel at ksemmel@wnylc.org.