Saturday’s 12th annual Butterfly Festival at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center attracted nature lovers during the monarch butterfly migration. Participants could walk the nature trails with butterfly nets so the Monarchs could be tagged and released.
Other activities included a “monarch obstacle course,” for kids, pollinator puddler craft and seed-ball launching. There were educational programs and a magic show.
KWEC Director Curtis Wolf estimated there were 450 participants at this year’s festival, including about 30 volunteers.
The Center for Counseling and Consultation/Central Kansas Partnership Suicide Prevention Task Force was also on hand, kicking off the morning with a Glow For Life Remembrance Ceremony and one-mile walk. The walk began at 7:15 a.m. with 48 participants.
Walking along the nature trail, people could see decorated butterfly art with positive messages and memorials such as “You matter” and “There are Zero Reasons Why you should struggle alone.”
Holly Bowyer with The Center said the local community mental health service was at two other events on Saturday, as its representatives attended the Wheels and Squeals event at Barton Community College and the Community Baby Shower for Rice County.
Each year, millions of monarch butterflies undertake their annual fall flight to Mexico. Nets and tags were available for anyone who wanted to head into the flower-filled fields and shelter belt around KWEC to capture and tag the monarchs, but some of the children were just as excited to catch and release rolly-pollies.
The tags are numbered and KWEC staff note that each year a few of the monarchs tagged at the event are recovered at three Mexico roost sites. Data collected from tagged monarchs helps support the research of Monarch Watch.
“We had good numbers of monarchs available, and participants tagged 47 monarchs on Saturday,” Wolf said. “Field trips by several area schools to KWEC have tagged 105 monarchs over the last couple of weeks.”
Pollinator puddler
For this craft, each child was given a ball of clay to shape into a small bowl or edged disc. They could add designs using stamping tools. According to information from the KWEC, the puddlers will harden in two or three days and can be placed outdoors to catch a small pocket of dew, rain, or sprinkler water for pollinators. Butterflies and other pollinators, such as bees, get most of their energy and moisture from plant nectar, but having extra water sources can help, especially during hot, dry weather. Butterflies can’t land directly on water (like in the middle of a pond), so having a puddler with a perching edge provides a good landing spot.
