Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, Kempton, Berks County, will hold a full-day Monarch Migration Celebration on September 15, including a rare opportunity to tag your own monarch and take part in a butterfly release.

The Tag-Your-Own-Monarch program costs $40 for a group of three ($20 for Hawk Mountain Members), and includes one butterfly, all instruction on tagging and handling, and the chance for each person in the group to handle the butterfly before release.

Participants may opt for an 11 a.m. or 3 p.m. program, and will receive a free trail pass for each person in his or her group. Space is limited, so interested participants must call 610-756-6961 to register. Half of all proceeds will be donated to monarch tagging programs.

Other activities will be included free with trail admission, and will take place in and around the Visitor Center. Here, visitors may learn more from monarch biologist John Drummond from Lafayette College, which sponsors this event.

Drummond will be set up outside between the Visitor Center and trail entrance, and will have a full display of caterpillars, chrysalis and butterflies to help people learn to identify butterfly stages, and also to share information on migratory journeys and tagging.

At the lookouts, counters and interns will point out passing monarchs and other larger raptor migrants, and children will be encouraged to participate as a Monarch Monitoring Biologist, and tally and report the butterflies they see that day. Indoors will be a variety of take-home activities for children, a host of information about the monarch butterfly, threats to the species, its migration and lifecycle, and the importance of native plants to the species, particularly milkweed.

At 1 p.m., children at the Visitor Center may participate in a symbolic migration during Send a Monarch to Mexico, a 30-minute program where each child learns about the monarch migration path, colors a paper butterfly, and includes a greeting for children in the butterflies’ wintering ground. Hawk Mountain educators will collect completed projects and mail to a participating school in Mexico.

Monarch Migration Day is an annual event designed to educate and increase awareness about the incredible 3,000-mile migration of the tiny Monarch butterfly from the northern United States to Mexico, and to encourage people of all ages to learn more about the phenomena of migration.

Regular Hawk Mountain programs on Monarch Migration Day will include a binocular basics review at 9 and 11 a.m. near the South Lookout, a live hawk or owl program at 10 a.m., Noon, 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. in the Outdoor Amphitheater, a lesson in raptor trapping and tagging at 11 am near South Lookout and a full day of nature interpretation at the North and the South Lookouts.

Open year-round, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is the world's first refuge for birds of prey and an international center for raptor conservation. Trail fees and membership dues support the Sanctuary’s conservation mission and on autumn weekends cost $7 for adults and seniors and $3 children six to 12. Admission is free for one year with the purchase of a Mountain Membership, beginning at $35.

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is located just three miles south of New Ringgold on Route 895, and is 7 miles north of the I-78/Route 61 Cabela’s intersection.

For more information, call 610-756-6961 or visit the Hawk Mountain website.

NewsClip: Monarch Butterflies Set Record At Hawk Mountain

9/17/2012