Life List #21: The Monarch Migration

I have a few friends, Vicki & Mark in Florida and Wendy in Texas, who "grow" butterflies every year.

Specifically Monarchs.

From the tiny bumplike egg cases on their milkweeds

To voracious green, yellow and black striped caterpillars.

and

"Ohmigod...there are 14 now...we are going to need MORE milkweed plants!!!"

and the slumbering Chrysalis

With its golden ridge and flecks.

Until at last with much wiggling and change

A Butterfly is GROWN.

To begin the CYCLE all over again.

Vicki is where I learned how to tell the Males Monarchs from the Female.

The Male having two black spots on his lower wings...the female having none.

Anyway, although we are treated to some of the migrating butterflies flitting through Indiana...they are never in vast numbers.  I, sometimes, like to think that a few of them might be Vicki's as they wander the long path to Mexico.

I have never seen the huge Migration.

So today we will see it together...virtually.

The migration begins in  March and April.

Filling the skies and trees in parts of Mexico and California with Orange and Black. So many then seem to hang from the trees like autumn leaves...except it is Spring.

The Migration

https://youtu.be/QpffQtKN-gk

https://youtu.be/LawHWsIqa5s

Timelapse of Monarch Butterfly from Egg-Butterfly (BEST)

https://youtu.be/7AUeM8MbaIk

Surprisingly, the generation that leaves Mexico for Canada will never see it again. The Monarch lifecycle is short and 4 generations will pass in a single year. The butterflies that will return to Mexico in the late fall will be three genrations removed from those who left.

And this 4th generation...although they have never seen the mountains of Mexico...will return to them to start the CYCLE over and over again.


More Anon...