Dozens of families crowded into the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park on Saturday to watch monarch butterflies get captured, tagged with tiny coded stickers, and released back into the sky before their long flight south to Mexico. The annual Flutter Into Fall event mixed hands-on science with cultural celebration, drawing kids who squealed when a butterfly landed on an open palm and parents who came back year after year to see it happen.
The demonstration was led by Allen Lawrence, curator of entomology at the museum, who also manages its tropical butterfly collection and is a member of the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Lawrence and his group captured, marked and then released the monarchs into the wild as onlookers watched the entire process up close. The Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network, which teaches residents how to safely capture and mark monarchs for research, has grown well beyond its Chicago roots since it began.
The tagging protocol on display traces back to weatherproof sticker tags developed in 1992 by Dr. Orley “Chip” Taylor when he founded the Monarch Watch community-science program at the University of Kansas. Volunteers apply the coded stickers to the underside of a monarch's hind wings, a method designed not to impede flight while still allowing scientists to trace individual migration paths.
A Family Trip From Indiana and a Toddler's Surprise
The Charles family traveled from Merrillville, Indiana, for Saturday's event, with Kervin Charles saying, per the same Sun-Times account, that he enjoyed being around so many varieties of butterflies. Brisa Nuno, who has visited the museum numerous times with her family, said she had never before seen how butterflies are tracked. Her daughter, Eloise Nuno, said she was surprised when a butterfly fell and then flew off again.
Four-year-old Johari Mnyuku reacted with delight when a butterfly landed on her hand inside the Judy Istock Butterfly Haven, which had recently received a batch of tropical butterflies newly emerged from their chrysalises. The 2,700-square-foot Haven, which houses more than 40 tropical butterfly species alongside tropical plants and birds, began charging non-members a $5 add-on entry fee back in February, a policy Hoodline first reported on to help cover the exhibit's operational and conservation costs.
Cultural Performances Tie Migration to Día de los Muertos
Beyond the science stations and arts and crafts tables, Flutter Into Fall featured a performance by Xochitl-Quetzal Danza Azteca, according to the Sun-Times. In Mexican culture, the monarchs' arrival is associated with Día de los Muertos and can represent a spiritual connection between the living and the departed, with the butterflies themselves widely seen as a symbol of resilience.
Jeffery Wolfthal, public programs manager at the nature museum, said the event aimed to educate visitors both on the science and the cultural significance of monarchs. “Education of people is important for the betterment of our environment, and that helps these species,” Wolfthal said, per the Sun-Times. Lawrence, who said he never outgrew his childhood bug-collecting phase, added that events like this one can help children turn a passing interest in insects into a future career.
Why This Year's Migration Numbers Look Promising
Lawrence said 2026 was a good year for the monarch species, a claim bolstered by numbers released the same month. World Wildlife Fund Mexico reported in March that eastern migratory monarchs occupied 7.24 acres of forest in their Mexican overwintering grounds during the 2025–2026 winter, a 64% jump from the 4.42 acres recorded the year before, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Those annual surveys serve as the primary scientific benchmark researchers use to gauge the health of the monarch population.
Still, the species remains under close federal watch. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially proposed listing the monarch as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in December 2024, alongside accompanying regulations meant to preserve flexibility for routine agricultural and habitat management activities, per the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency notes that season-to-season weather conditions and climate change can both dictate whether monarchs are able to sustain their life cycle at all.
The Super Generation's Long Flight South
The monarchs departing Chicago belong to what the Fish and Wildlife Service calls a biologically distinct “super generation.” Unlike summer generations that live just two to five weeks and reproduce immediately, this fall generation enters reproductive diapause and can live six to nine months, flying as far as 2,500 miles across much of North America to reach Mexico. It's the only generation built to make the entire journey south.
That long-distance survival depends heavily on habitat along the way, particularly milkweed, the sole host plant monarch caterpillars require. Illinois has committed to adding 150 million new milkweed stems by 2038 under the Illinois Monarch Action Plan, part of a broader regional goal to plant 1.3 billion stems across the central United States, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. A 2017 state law also bars municipalities and counties from classifying milkweed as a noxious or exotic weed, clearing the way for Chicago-area residents to legally grow it in home gardens.
A Museum Rooted in Chicago's Scientific History
The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum opened in Lincoln Park in 1999 as the public-facing institution of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, which was founded in 1857 as the city's first natural history museum, predating both the Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium. Its Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network began in 1987 and grew into the museum's flagship community science program after Dr. Doug Taron joined as program director in 1997, expanding from seven original Chicagoland routes to more than 100 routes statewide.
Illinois has long claimed a special civic bond with the species: the state designated the monarch its official insect in 1975 after a lobbying effort led by third-grade students at Dennis Lab School in Decatur, and later named milkweed the official state wildflower in 2017. Similar tagging efforts have played out elsewhere in the region this season, including one Hoodline covered as taggers chase monarchs downstate before the migration got underway.
