Mystery Monarch
Monarch Program associate Donna Grubussic reared a monarch butterfly from an egg and released it as an adult on the 30th of September, 2007 from Carpinteria, California. It was a female with tag #64231 placed over the right forewing. On the 4th of January 2008 the entire forewing of the butterfly was found in Phoenix, Arizona. A forewing alone without damage usually indicates a bird attack, often by kingbirds (Tyrannus spp.) The distance it traveled was about 430 miles (straight line distance).
The mystery about this butterfly is that the tagged wing was found inside a butterfly enclosure at The Desert Botanical Garden by a volunteer pruning bushes. The enclosure was open to the public from September 29th through November 11th. An average time frame for this butterfly to arrive in Phoenix from Carpinteria would have been late October (based on the history of migration movements). How did the butterfly end up inside the enclosure? The best scenario is that a visitor found the tagged monarch in the garden and placed it inside the enclosure because it was tagged. The facility hosts a tagging program in the autumn and someone may have thought the tagged monarch was part of the program. This is why it is called a mystery monarch.
Monarch Program Tag #64231 from Carpinteria, CA to Phoenix, AZ (Click the image for a larger view.)
There is only one other known monarch flight to Arizona in the autumn. It was one of 300 monarchs released in late September at El Rosario de Arriba, near San Quintin, in northern Baja California about 12 years ago. This monarch traveled nearly 200 miles and was found in early October near Phoenix. However, the recovery is not recognized by scientists because it was a monarch captured in Northern California and released in Baja California, commonly called a monarch transfer.
The Monarch Program has three spring tagged retrievals in Arizona from California and Baja California overwintering sites:
1. Santa Barbara, CA (7 Nov. 1987) to Portal, AZ (9 April), 565 miles
2. El Sauzal, B.C. (13 Dec. 1997) to Gila Bend, AZ (13 March), 250 miles
3. Santa Barbara, CA (Dec. or Jan. 2000) to Page, AZ (14 April), 480 miles
These records show that some overwintering monarchs fly inland during the spring to Arizona. It may not be unusual for California autumn monarchs to fly southeast into Arizona according to butterfly expert/author Robert Pyle. During his journeys nearly a decade ago, he followed autumn monarchs throughout the west and discovered that many traveled southeast into Arizona (Chasing Monarchs, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999).