NORTH PARK — The monarchs are leaving.
On Sunday, people can get a chance to launch monarch butterflies on the insects' migration back to Mexico from North Park Village Nature Center, 5801 N. Pulaski Rd. The center's Monarchpalooza 2015, which will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., is free.
The butterflies at the nature center are raised and released each summer as part of the University of Minnesota's Monarch Larva Monitoring Project. The project involves using volunteers across the U.S. and Canada to aid in monarch research.
Festival participants will be "citizen scientists" for a day by assisting nature center naturalists in tagging butterflies and learning about the insects' migration pattern from Canada to Mexico. With some flying as far as 3,000 miles, they are part of one of nature's longest migration routes.
Volunteers will attach tiny, coded stickers the butterflies as part of an effort to track the insects.
The festival will also have crafts, posters illustrating the life of the large, orange-and-black creatures, live butterflies in holding nets waiting for release, display specimens, and live specimens in various stages — eggs, caterpillars, pupae and chrysalides.
Participants can also learn about milkweed, the only plant that the monarch butterfly will eat or lay eggs on.
A monarch butterfly is the only insect known to have a migration pattern, the same as birds. They do so in generations that live for only four to eight weeks.
The ones at the NPV nature center are part of the "fifth generation" butterflies that will make the last 2,000 mile journey south to Mexico, where they will spend the winter.
At last year's festival, the NPV nature center tagged and sent off as many as 60 butterflies. Young participants were allowed to "name" the butterflies and send them off with "high ones" — launching them by holding up their index fingers.
Check out the video below to see a newbown monarch butterfly emerge from its chrysalis:
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