Open House for Butterflies

– and people, too, at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed’s Butterfly Festival.

By: Anthony Stoeckert
   Everyone loves butterflies. Even the most entomophobic of us seem to appreciate their beauty and marvel at the migration of the monarch.
   "For the average person, I would think that it’s because they’re so delicate-looking," says Tara Miller, a naturalist and teacher at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed. "Most of them are very colorful. And they just look so peaceful versus some of the other insects like praying mantises and wasps that just look mean. Butterflies look… gentle."
   So it’s no surprise that the Watershed hosts a butterfly festival every summer; it’s much more of a crowd-pleaser than a mosquito-palooza would be.
   The Aug. 11 family-friendly event at the Watershed will be filled with butterfly themed activities including tours of the Kate Gorrie Memorial Butterfly House, children’s butterfly costume contests, face painting, crafts and a water slide. Live music will be performed by bands like the Soteria Band, Music Together and Mountain View. Food items that will be on sale include organic popcorn (from Amwell Valley Organic Grains), organic ice cream (from Bent Spoon), and hot dogs and burgers.
   Beyond butterflies, the festival has broadened into an environmental educational festival in recent years. Representatives from Montgomery Open Space, Friends of the Hamilton Marsh and Master Gardeners of Mercer County will be on hand to discuss and demonstrate locally grown slow foods, beneficial insects, and identification of insects, weeds and flowers. Lawrence Toyota will showcase hybrid vehicles.
   Participants in a scavenger hunt hosted by the Watershed’s Green Team will learn about the group’s river-friendly activities while hunting for rain barrels, rain gardens, the Watershed’s windmill and native plants.
   People’s ability to have a positive effect on the Earth (or at least reduce their negative effect) has become a hot-button topic with movies like An Inconvenient Truth and talk of carbon offsets. According to Candy Reed, special events manager for the Watershed, the metamorphosis of the butterfly festival is a result of increased awareness of those issues.
   The festival has grown in numbers, as well. Ms. Reed says about 500 people attended the 2005 festival, and nearly 3,000 showed up at last year’s. One downside to that was the demands on the Watershed’s parking spaces (resulting in 45-minute waits in cars, frustrating for visitors and not in tune with a pro-environment event). Ms. Reed says the parking issue has been resolved with the use of an off-site lot and shuttle bus service to and from the parking area.
   Butterflies remain the focal point of the annual fundraiser. Ms. Miller says 150 species of butterflies can be found in New Jersey and the Watershed’s butterfly house is home to monarchs, sulfurs, cabbage white butterflies, black swallow tails, wood nymphs, wood saturs, Eastern tailed blues and others.
   But it’s the monarch that seems to be everyone’s favorite because of its bright colors and incredible migration. In the autumn, millions of monarchs will fly from the northeast to Florida and Mexico, some traveling up to 2,500 miles. They’ll breed and several generations will fly north (stopping at points along the way to mate) until monarchs are fluttering around New Jersey again next summer.
   "They’re kind of dear to my heart," Ms. Miller says of the monarch, while adding that she admires all kinds of insects. "I find it so amazing, the challenges that they have to go through to get (down south). If you think about this tiny, light-as-air butterfly that flies all the way to Mexico or Florida, and stays there all winter long."
   One of the Watershed’s annual butterfly traditions is the tagging and releasing of monarchs in September. Butterflies are tagged with tiny stickers that are placed on a large dark spot (placing them there doesn’t seem to affect their flight pattern). Once tagged, the butterfly’s number is entered into a database hosted by an organization called Monarch Watch. Anyone who catches a tagged monarch would enter it into the database, so that details such as routes and lengths of flights can be determined.
   "You can literally track your monarchs as they’re traveling south," Ms. Miller says. "So if we find one that’s already tagged, we enter that into the system."
   While touring the butterfly house during the festival, keep in mind that the monarch is the only tropical butterfly that journeys to New Jersey. Theme parks may house other tropical butterflies, but their butterfly houses aren’t designed for the insects to breed and lay eggs.
   Keeping the butterflies protected in the Watershed’s house has its challenges, such as spiders and yellow jackets that "break in" to go after the caterpillars and butterflies.
   "It makes you realize you can’t control nature, no matter what you do," Ms. Miller says.
   As much as the Butterfly Festival has grown over the years, from tours of the house and children’s crafts to an opportunity to learn how to improve one’s impact on the environment, Ms. Reed says there’s room for it to get even bigger.
   "I think that there are an awful lot more companies that are resources for people that they ought to know about as far as alternative fuels, alternative heating systems, alternative energy, recycled products, all those sorts of things that could easily be here," she says. "Once you get to a particular size, you start to attract larger companies that do those sorts of things. That’s beginning to happen and that’s a good thing for us."
   It’s also a way to attract new visitors to the Watershed. Many know the Watershed exists, but may not put aside the time to visit. Ms. Reed expects people who attend the festival to come back and visit the butterfly house (open daily, dawn to dusk ) or take a hike. Last year saw a lot of new visitors to the Watershed after the butterfly extravaganza, according to Ms. Reed.
   "These were just people coming, spreading out a blanket and hanging here, which is wonderful," she says. "One of the nicer parts (of the Watershed) is just watching people, little kids and older people, enjoy the land. It’s wonderful, and that’s what we want people to do."
The Seventh Annual Butterfly Festival will take place at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed, 31 Titus Mill Road, Pennington, Aug. 11, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Butterfly contest, 12:45 p.m. on the main stage (registration, 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.); off-site parking with shuttle bus service available; no pets allowed; $15/ car or $5/ person; (609) 737-3735; www.thewatershed.org