Teacher/Blogger at Work

Butterfly School at Monarch Watch Fall 2009 Open House

One of the highlights of the annual fall open house at Monarch Watch is Butterfly School, in which Chip Taylor, founder and director of Monarch Watch, demonstrates how to catch, hold, tag and release a Monarch butterfly before it begins its migration to its winter home in Mexico.
The weather for this fall’s event (Sept. 12) was [...]

Kiwi Bloke

Kiwi Bloke’s father, Turoa Kiniwe Royal, received a doctorate in literature recently at Massey University in New Zealand.  The YouTube video showing the ceremony is in Maori, which is beautiful even if I don’t understand it. (The video might be slow to load.)  The five men performing the haka in the audience at the [...]

Monarch Watch Spring 2009 Open House

My friend Deb buys some tropical milkweed at the Monarch Watch Spring Open House at the University of Kansas on May 9. Monarch Watch Director Chip Taylor, at left in the yellow hat, and many volunteers were busy as the crowd snapped up the pollinator-pleasing annuals and perennials. The sale is a fund-raiser for Monarch [...]

National Grammar Day

I partied really hard yesterday on Square Root Day yesterday (03/03/09).  After all, it only happens nine times a century.  The next one won’t happen until 04/04/2016.   However, after so much calculating, National Grammar Day today caught me completely by surprise!  In fact, I’m going to make this short to minimize my chances for a grammar goof-up.  
To learn more about how you [...]

Monarch Butterflies Complete Annual Migration to Mexico

Dec. 3 – Millions of butterflies have found sanctuary in Mexico as they complete their annual migration from North America, according to a Reuters News report.
The Mexican government has plans to massively expand the sanctuaries in the coming years, according to Monarch Butterfly Reserve Director, Concepcion Miguel Martinez.
A news video about the [...]

The Mystery of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly

One day a week ago the bronze fennel was teeming with Black Swallowtail caterpillars.  The next day, they were gone.  Where did they go?  Off to the woods forty feet away?  I worried about them struggling through the grass to complete their life cycle.  It’s a dangerous world.  Birds, lawnmowers, children chasing balls, other insects. 
Were those caterpillars the last of the year?  [...]

Monarch Watch

You can’t keep butterfly lovers away, even when it’s raining.  More than a thousand people, a lot of them children, showed up for the annual Monarch Watch fall open house on Sept. 6 at Foley Hall at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.  That’s almost twice the usual number of visitors, according to entomologist Orley [...]

Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly Metamorphosis

Time Lapse – Phoebis sennae Butterfly Pupates-Emerges

In this video, a Cloudless Sulphur caterpillar pupates and emerges as a butterfly.
Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas held its annual open house Sept. 6, 2008, in its home at Foley Hall. Hundreds of visitors toured the building, greenhouse and Pollination Garden where hundreds [...]

Astounding Technology

Beloit College in Wisconsin recently released its annual Mindset List, which shows the kind of world that incoming freshmen grew up in. For example, to the class of 2012, GPS has always been available, phones always had caller ID and tax returns could always be filed online (not that these students were doing their own taxes.)  You can [...]