The 2016 Monarch Monitoring Project Team

We’re happy to introduce the Monarch Monitoring Project Field Naturalist Interns for the 2016 field season.  The Monarch Monitoring Project is a program of New Jersey Audubon’s Cape May Bird Observatory.

Lindsey Brendel teaching about monarchs.

Lindsey Brendel will be returning for a third season.  If you came to Cape May during the monarch season in 2014 or 2015 it’s likely that you met Lindsey.  She has been the passionate mother to monarchs raised in the display at the Cape May Bird Observatory Northwood Center, and a super-enthusiastic presenter at our tagging demos and the drop-in programs at the Cape May Point Triangle Park.  Perhaps you just ran into Lindsey’s smiling face and trusty butterfly net around Cape May Point as she tagged monarchs at the gardens and parks around the community.  Behind the scenes Lindsey has done a great job organizing our data and the materials used in our research and education efforts.

Diane Tassey teaching about monarchs.

Joining Lindsey this year will be Diane Tassey, who brings a wealth of experience to our project.  Diane holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental Education and has many years of teaching experience.  She has taught about monarchs in the classroom and also taught an in-service course for other teachers titled, “A Cross Curricular Study of Monarch Migrations.”  She has studied monarchs at the wintering territory in Mexico, rainforest ecology in Belize, and salmon habitat in Washington state.  She lives in northern New Jersey and has visited Cape May often during the fall to observe the monarch migration, and this year she has carved out the time to spend the full migration season working with out team.  We’re excited to welcome Diane to “Team Monarch” and imagine we’ll learn as much (or more) from her as she might learn from us.

Perennial members of “Team Monarch” include Founder and Director Emeritus Dick Walton, Field Coordinator Louise Zemaitis, and Director Mark Garland, along with many enthusiastic volunteers.

Dick Walton

Louise Zemaitis

Mark Garland

We hope to welcome many monarch enthusiasts to Cape May this fall.  Our field season runs from September 1 through October 31, and our formal programs begin on Sept. 14.  We’re often asked to predict the best time for seeing monarchs in Cape May, and unfortunately we can’t pinpoint the exact days ahead of time.  We can say that usually most monarchs migrate through Cape May between September 10 and October 20, but during that period some days will have many monarchs and some days will have few.  We do promise, however, to update our blog and FaceBook pages frequently through the season, and we’ll make a special effort to get the word out whenever we see a significant upsurge in monarch numbers.