Inside the Cocoon All about the Monarch Butterfly

Inside the Cocoon

It’s a chilly Saturday in October. The kind of day where the sun can’t seem to make up its mind. Clouds roll overhead and shadows fall over the ocean.

The parking lot at Cape May Point State Park is full, and an eclectic mix of visitors emerge from various types of vehicles. A trolley pulls up with a wedding party, juggling bouquets and flip-flops in formal attire, ready to pose for pictures on the beach with the happy couple. People walk around the top of the lighthouse. From the ground they look like little ants, peering down on the scene.

On the other side of the parking lot, the hawk watch platform is full of bird-watchers, perched on the deck since sunrise, with impressive-looking cameras, binoculars and khaki-colored clothing. Right below them nestled in the East Picnic Pavilion, a group begins to gather. Toddlers dismount tricycles as octogenarians find a seat at the picnic tables. All of these guests have one thing in common: they want to know more about Monarch butterflies, the beautiful, mysterious creatures that pass through Cape May in droves between late August and early November.

Two young women with butterflyembroidered baseball caps address dozens of Monarch enthusiasts. They are from the Monarch Monitoring Project. Field Naturalist Intern Madison Hull and Seasonal Field Naturalist Kyra Manudich hold up graphs and pictures of orangecolored insects. They address a captive audience.

“The mission of the Monarch Monitoring Project is to educate through public outreach,” Hull explains, as she begins a monologue about the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly, and why they, like many humans, find Cape May to be an idyllic resting place in the fall.

Like all butterflies, Monarchs begin as caterpillars, but even before that, as tiny eggs laid on leaves of milkweed plants. As many may have noticed driving or biking down Sunset Boulevard to get to Cape May Point, swamp milkweed is abundant in Cape May. After a week, the egg hatches and a caterpillar emerges.

“For two weeks, the caterpillar

Right A Monarch butterfly makes himself at home on a Zinnia at Beach Plum Farm.

does nothing but eat milkweed and poop,” says Hull, looking to a group of children attempting to suppress their giggles.

After two weeks of feasting on this delicacy, the caterpillar finds a secluded spot where it hangs in a J-shape. For about twenty hours, the caterpillar forms the chrysalis, a hard, outer skin where it will undergo the process of metamorphosis.

For another two weeks, within the chrysalis, the caterpillar uses all the energy from the milkweed to convert itself into a butterfly. When the time comes, the butterfly begins to break out of the chrysalis, but it’s not quite ready to fly. At first, its wings are shriveled up and its abdomen is swollen. For several hours the butterfly pumps liquid from its abdomen into its wings. The wings expand and it continues to hang until the wings have dried. Once the wings are nice and strong, it flies off to find its first meal as a full-fledged butterfly. Usually, some nectar from a beautiful flower or plant. In Cape May, a butterfly never has to go too far for good food.

The Monarch’s pre-metamorphosis meals serve an important purpose. Milkweed is full of glycoside toxins, which are not poisonous to butterflies, but they are poisonous for any living organism with a chambered heart. This includes animals like humans and birds. The toxins in milkweed make the Monarch taste bitter. If a bird were to attempt to eat a monarch butterfly, they would spit it out. Usually.

“Yesterday we saw a cuckoo eat six of them in forty-five minutes,” naturalist Kyra Manudich chimes in. According to Manudich, this is very rare. Even rarer was the fact that the cuckoo did not succumb to the toxins.

Pictured A monarch caterpillar munching on a leaf. This is a familiar sight along Cape May’s Sunset Boulevard, where Sawmp Milkweed is abundant.

“We’ll keep monitoring the area and see if it shows up again,” she says. The bird likely went elsewhere and was very ill, or in some rare case, it was fine. Manudich mentions that this phenomenon could give insight to changes in the environment, particularly changes in the toxicity of milkweed.

After answering questions about metamorphosis, the women turn their attention to a bearded man standing nearby. He listens intently and clutches a small cooler. They introduce him.

“This is Mark Garland, director of the Monarch Monitoring Project.”

He begins a round of applause for the presenters and summons other volunteers waiting nearby. They reach into the cooler and pull out small, translucent envelopes.

“Gather around the closest table,” he instructs the crowd.

At each picnic table a member of the project or a volunteer naturalist lays out a small ruler, a small notebook, a pen, stickers and two envelopes that move slightly. Inside are Monarch butterflies, who anxiously await the tagging demonstration.

“Through the envelopes they can still breathe,” explains volunteer Paige Cunningham. “If we put them in a cage or something like that, they would bang up against the sides and damage their wings. The envelopes don’t hurt them.”

She writes down the date, time and location in the notebook, and passes the page of stickers around. On each sticker is written a combination of letters and numbers, and a website address: “mwtag.org.” Below that, the words “Monarch Watch.”

“The letters and numbers are like their social security number. It’s how we identify the butterfly if someone finds them hundreds of miles away.”

Cunningham carefully takes the butterfly out of the envelope and gingerly holds it by the wings. The butterfly opens up, and she points to the thin black lines.

“This is how we know this is a male. The lines are thinner, plus these—” she indicates two dark spots on the lower wings. They are scent glands.

“The male releases pheromones. It’s the male’s job to attract the female.”

An older married couple look at one another. She nudges him. He shrugs and they both smile.

Cunningham measures the wings on the butterfly and marks it down.

She takes note of the quality of the wings. “Good.”

She gently squeezes the abdomen, explaining that she is trying to assess how “fat” he is.

“I’ll give him a three out of five,” she says, marking it down in the notebook.

Cunningham shows the group the different parts of the butterfly’s anatomy. First, the proboscis, a long straw-like part at the top of the head that expands out for the insect to suck water and juice from plants. Then, the legs. Each person holds out a hand as the butterfly clings tightly to their skin. Cunningham explains that this tight grip allows them to land on plants and flowers and keeps them from blowing away.

Finally, it’s time to tag the

butterfly. Cunningham spreads out the wings and scratches a bit of the wings with her fingernail.

“What I’m doing is taking off the scales.”

She wipes her hand on her jeans and orange appears.

“The butterfly wing is actually clear, like a dragonfly. Can anyone guess why the scales are orange?”

After a few wrong guesses (from the grown-ups) she explains the reason for the Monarch’s bright color.

“In nature, orange and red indicate to other animals that they are toxic. It’s to warn other animals, and to protect the butterfly from getting eaten.” She goes on to explain that the scales also protect a butterfly from getting caught in things like spider’s webs.

Scratching the scales does not hurt the butterfly. It would be akin to cutting hair off a human.

Cunningham takes a sticker and places it on the cleared part of the butterfly’s wing. She presses it gently for several seconds. Now, it’s time to let the butterfly go.

The group moves to a nearby clearing and a guest steps forward. Cunningham places the butterfly on their nose. It perches there for a second as people take pictures. The butterfly gently flies away, and the crowd claps.

“Adios! Vaya con Dios,” director Mark Garland calls after the butterfly.

“I always say goodbye in Spanish, since they’re headed to Mexico,” he explains.

This year marked the thirtieth season for the Monarch Monitoring Project. Since then, approximately one hundred butterflies tagged in Cape May have made their way to the same spot in El Rosario, Mexico. Monarch tagging has provided invaluable information about these migratory insects and their travel patterns and habits.

Most insects can lie dormant in freezing conditions during the wintertime, but not Monarchs. They are a tropical species, and therefore, as temperatures get cooler, they go further south. Which is why during September and October, you’ll find Monarch butterflies fluttering through the fields at Beach Plum Farm, enjoying a

Pictured The flowers of Beach Plum Farm make a natural refuge for Monarchs.

drink from the flowers along Congress Hall’s Veranda and even resting on the beach before they begin their journey across the Delaware Bay. Some of these butterflies have already traveled from Canada, Maine and other parts of New England. Because of Cape May’s geographical location and its abundance of sustenance, it’s the ideal spot for a butterfly to stop, rest and fuel up to make its way across the bay. The butterflies found in Cape May in the fall live anywhere from six to eight months, which is significantly longer than the two or three generations that came before them, and those that will come after. The winter butterflies know exactly where to go to survive. They have an instinctive “inner compass.” After enjoying delicious Cape May nectar, butterflies will roost in trees for the evening. Then, they get an early start and travel across the Delaware Bay for the Delmarva Peninsula. Another popular spot to stop is Cape Charles, Virginia. Then down to Florida, and across the Gulf of Mexico. The lucky ones will make it all the way to the Transverse Neo-Volcanic Mountain Range in Michoacan, Mexico. Here they will roost in trees, in large

Pictured A Monarch butterfuly enjoys a drink from a Beach Plum Farm Zinnia flower in Fall 2021. Plan a Cape May autumn getaway to see the migration for yourself!

groups, from November until March. The mountain air provides the perfect temperature for these Monarchs to huddle together until the spring, when the weather warms and they begin to emerge from their dormant state. They mate and die off. Their offspring begin to travel north and mate. The Monarchs will not return to Mexico for another three generations.

Monarchs who travel east of the Rocky Mountains stay to the east. Those on the west migrate primarily up and down the coast of California.

Besides tagging butterflies, the Monarch Monitoring project also counts them. Two to three times a day, between September and October, the naturalists will drive along a five-mile route at twenty miles per hour. The route passes through a variety of habitats including southern hardwood forest, agricultural field, brackish wetland meadow, suburban neighborhoods and coastal dunes along the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay. A count is kept with a clicker and recorded.

The global Monarch population has experienced a decline in the past thirty years. This is due to many factors. For example, in the Midwest, milkweed is harder to come by due to industrial agriculture. But unlike the rest of the United States, the Monarch population has held steady in Cape May over the past thirty years, thanks to the biodiversity and to small farms like Beach Plum Farm, full of flowers for the butterflies to feed on. Butterfly gardens in Cape May and up and down the East Coast help to keep the butterfly population alive and healthy.

Some may ask why it’s so important to preserve Monarch butterflies. In practical terms, they are an indicator species. Butterflies and bees feed off the same plants, and bees are important pollinators. When butterflies are struggling to survive because of pesticides or changes in farming, that’s a warning sign to humans that they need to make some changes. Small, sustainable farms like Beach Plum Farm are important to ensuring Monarch butterflies and bees can continue to survive.

Plus, walking around the farm and seeing all of the bright orange fluttering wings is truly a sight to behold.

While Monarch butterflies pass through on their way to warmer climates, visitors from all over come to Cape May to see them on their journey. There’s no question that they’re beautiful, and some may say there’s something about them that’s magical. In some cultures, the butterflies have a deeper spiritual significance: They are symbols of rebirth. In Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations they are believed to be the souls of ancestors returning to earth to visit for one day.

According to Mark Garland, “They are conspicuous insects. People come to Cape May just to see them, and they touch people’s hearts. I think there’s value to that.”

The Monarchs know more than any other species that the fall is a special time in Cape May. The days on the beach are still warm. The nights are crisp, and there’s plenty of delicious sustenance to enjoy. It’s the perfect place to come and take a rest, whether you’re a Monarch butterfly looking to cross the bay or a human