The butterfly garden at Lighthouse Point Park is usually aflutter with orange and black monarchs at this time of year, as the insects rest and grab a snack on their way from New England and parts north, to Mexico.
A crowd of monarch-watchers showed up Sunday to check them out at a planned Migration Festival. The weather had other plans: The event was moved inside the confines of the Lighthouse carousel to keep people out of 1.3 inches of rain. The monarchs, meanwhile, found shelter on branches and under leaves — and stayed away from the carousel.
Gary and Carol Lemmon had better luck on a previous day, when they came to Lighthouse from their Branford home. They were there on business: They tend the garden and tag monarchs to see where the butterflies end up, how many survive, and how long the trip takes.
Gary Lemmon deftly snagged the insects in a net as they darted from flower to flower. He then gently grasped each butterfly and applied an adhesive disk about a quarter of an inch across to the top of one of the wings.
The disks are color coded so that entomologists at the University of Kansas can determine the origins of the butterflies after the insects arrive at the Transvolcanic Range of Central Mexico, about 100 miles west of Mexico City. That’s a long haul for a creature that weighs about three-quarters of a paper clip.
All of the monarchs from the eastern United States then overwinter in oyamel fir trees. These forests grow only at high altitudes and are slowly being stripped for lumber.
The angle of the sun is one of the signals that prompts migration, Gary Lemmon said. The monarchs will travel about 25 to 30 miles a day, keeping to the coast for navigation.
How they find the fir trees is not known, said Carol Lemmon, an entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, now retired.
The Mexican government pays a small sum for tagged monarchs, which is intended to help preserve the forest as a non-power saw source of income for people in the area.
Thus, the tags are a different color every year, to prevent unscrupulous people from collecting dead monarchs and sticking tags on them to receive money. Gary Lemmon (pictured) records each tag, and eventually, when the monarchs are sampled in Mexico, it will be possible to tell whether they landed for a while in Lighthouse Park.
Carol Lemmon (pictured at the top of the story) said she and her husband are interested in butterflies as a delicate indicator of ecological health. “And because they’re beautiful,” she said.
The handsome monarch is covered with orange and ochre, and bordered by a velvety black strip dotted with white. The colorful markings are a signal to birds and other potential predators that monarchs do not taste good.
The insect feeds on milkweed as a caterpillar, picking up toxic chemicals from the plant. The local viceroy butterfly has evolved to look similar to the monarch, so that predators will avoid it, too.
Migrating monarchs consume only nectar on their voyage. While caterpillar, or larval stage monarchs, eat only milkweed, adults will sip from any tasty flower.
This sugar gives the insect enough energy to flap its wings around 700 times a minute, traveling at approximately 10 to 12 miles an hour.
The University of Kansas hosts the Monarch Watch, distributing milkweed seeds, tagging kits, rearing kits, books, T‑shirts, collecting nets and other assorted merchandise.
This is the 18th annual watch. Why the University of Kansas? Difficult to say, given that Kansas is not on any monarch migration route. Chip Taylor, an entomologist at the Kansas university is the principal organizer.
Sunday’s washout — no rain date — was sponsored by the New Haven parks and recreation department, New Haven Bird Club, Connecticut Butterfly Association. Audubon-Connecticut, Connecticut Ornithological Association, Connecticut Audubon Society, New England Hawk Watch and New Haven Land Trust.