Tagging Butterflies

 So that's super cool that you are tagging butterflies, Elizabeth. How are you involved in it, as part of a nature group? I read that you can also do it as an individual citizen, you can order your own butterfly tagging kit, so maybe that's how you're doing it. But it's a really great thing to do, except I imagine you'd have to be very delicate in handling the butterflies, which no doubt you are.  :)

Just now I found a website called monarchwatch.org, where there is a page headlined "Tagging Monarchs" that explains the whole procedure. It says "each Fall we distribute more than a quarter million tags to volunteers across North America", so maybe you are a volunteer in a program like this one? The subject is new to me, though I know that butterflies are indicators of all kinds of environmental conditions.

That's a very thick and very tall patch of sunflowers you are standing in, and I can see that you're holding what must be a butterfly net.

I hope you were able to tag a few!  :):)

I don't know how many Monarchs we have out here, I see a few here and there (in suburbia), but every few years, especially in recent times, whenever we've had a big rainy season, after it's over and the sun comes out, we've gotten these swarms of small butterflies called Painted Ladies. I've probably even mentioned them, maybe last Spring. They come up from Mexico, and they are all over the place for about a week or so. I remember just being on a CSUN walk and they'd fly by like a cloud.

Well, the smoke dissipated a little bit today, enough so that I was able to go for a walk this evening. Earlier, I was reading my book "The Temple of Man", written by Rene Schwaller de Lubicz, aka The Most Obtuse Author of All Time, and in one of his more lucid paragraphs he described something called a Nilometer, which was an architectural structure built into the walls of the Nile River, to measure it's depth. Part of it was a staircase, with which to gain access below the waterline, and then there were markers, chiseled into the side walls in stone, that showed how high the water had risen during periodic floods. You can Google the images of the Nilometer, but it's another example - and an early one - of measuring indicators of climatology.

Best of luck for tomorrow if you are tagging more Monarchs!

I'll see you in the morning. I love you, Elizabeth.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)