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1. We celebrated our second birthday with coffee, biscotti and each other. Vice president Jim Larson suggested we reflect on last year's activities at our birthday meeting. 2. President Pat Thomas brought copies of the second newsletter-hot off the press. She'll mail copies to members not at this meeting. She also had a flyer (revised) for people to share. Please let Pat know if you'd like additional copies of newsletters or flyers to pass on to others. 3. Jim Larson discussed last summer's monarch larval monitoring project. Gail Gilliland, co-director, was not at the meeting. We are one of three sites in Duluth taking part in this nation-wide study of the monarch life cycle. Jim shared some slides from Karen Oberhauser and gave data from our study. This is available for viewing on the mlmp site. We all agreed that we had a new appreciation of milkweed and a greater love of monarchs and are anticipating another good season in 2004. People interested in participating should contact Jim at 715-392-5732. 4. Wally Mattson emailed to say he' like our chapter to consider creating a localized butterfly viewing site list. He is willing to help with this project. All people at the meeting were interested. The question came up as to how to keep these sites safe. Jim Sanders suggested we could have sites for monitoring only and others for viewing. Also, land ownership must always be known and permission given to enter any site. We would make known those areas with butterfly populations that could tolerate abuse from walking or entering the area. We would not make known any sites with rare or threathened/endangered species. Wally was in CA chasing monarchs so we'll wait to hear more from him on this project when he's back in MN. 5. Jim Phillips gave details on our NABA butterfly Counts-2003. We saw 1,002 butterflies: 34 species on 5 counts, with 13 members participating. Jim will lead an identification class this spring to get us ready for another count season. Jim also told of the thousands of seeds he planted at his home. We hope to see some of those flowers this summer. Jim also mentioned that he and Wally are hoping to set up a butterfly migration station for counting this fall and he listed the species he and his sister saw out in the Cascades. 6. Marge Laskowski is in the hospital with 2 broken hands, a broken foot and other injuries from a traffic accident. She was hit by a car! We signed 2 cards for her and hope she'll be well fast. She was missed at our meeting very much. 7. Pat Thomas mentioned she'd like to continue work on the butterfly nectar plants for the NABA garden and habitat program. If you are interested please contact pat 218-525-1656. We left our meeting looking forward to February's speaker Dr. Robert
Dana who will talk about "Tallgrass Prairie Butterflies."
Robert is a leading expert on MN butterflies and a wonderful speaker.
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