St Paul Audubon's Annual Butterfly Census.

This weekend I will be participating in the St Paul Audubon Societies Annual Butterfly Census. Each summer members of the St Audubon chapter come together in this exercise in citizen science. The information that is collected is passed on to the North American Butterfly Association to help identify butterfly distribution and understand how issues such as habitat loss and climate change affect butterflies.

This will be the first time that I will be participating in the census. The census is taken at the Arden Hills Army Army Training Site so the number of participants is limited. The plan is two capture and identify butterflies in three different habitats, a native prairie, a restored Prairie and a bog. Once the butterflies have been identified and recorded they will be released. I will also bring one of my cameras so that I can hopefully get some butterfly pics. Though most of the 59 species that have been identified over the years are fairly common, such as the monarchs in the photos above, each year they find new species so perhaps I could get lucky and get some pics of a new butterfly.