We released our last pair yesterday (a male on the left, female on the right).
The total for the season was 109 (plus a few given to friends, neighbors, and their children to release), virtually all of those raised from eggs found on milkweed plants. I wish we had tagged them to find out where they might wind up. Perhaps next year.
One curious observation was that of the 109 monarchs, 69 were female and only 40 male. That may just be random variance in a limited sample, unless there's some biologic reason for having unequal sex ratios. I'm posting a question about these numbers on the Butterfly Gardens forum at GardenWeb (the premier place to have butterfly questions answered online, for any of you who might be interested); if the answer is interesting I'll repost it here later.
Now it's time to focus on the Black Swallowtails. More on them later.
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