The Incredible Monarch Winter Visitor

The Incredible Monarch Winter Visitor

The curiosities of nature are a marvelous in both simplicity and its unimaginable complexity.  Imagine a butterfly that goes through 4 generations in one year where 3 live only one month but the Methuselah generation lives 8 months and this butterfly flies 3000 miles in the fall from USA & Canada to the central mountains of Mexico to become a famous Winter Visitor.  It’s a type of hibernation I suppose.  They hang out in a particular pine tree waiting for Spring.  On days when the sun is shining they will fly by the billions.  The day we were there is was cold and they would only just begin to fly until the sun would go behind a cloud.  The male will carry the female upside down belly to belly flying endlessly wearing himself out during mating season (March).  She mates with several to ensure she is fully prepared for the return 3000 miles to lay the eggs.  Just imagine the buff Mr. Monarch says “ Wow, she is Drop Dead gorgeous”. Well that is exactly what happens to him after one passionate flying encounter with her!!  This She is identical to all other 100 billion butterfly babes.  After the fatal tryst with her partner she is ready to return to the Milk Weed of southern USA to lay her eggs.  The flight appears to take several several months in the fall and again in the spring.  Milk weed was common in Safford but not in Yuma.  There are many species of milk weed (they have a seed pod filled with cottony fiber which carries the seed in the wind.  The sap is a milky latex and toxic to cattle.  The butterfly concentrates the toxin in her skin and makes her unpalatable to most all would be predators.  It took many decades for scientists in Canada & USA who studied the monarch butterfly to find where they went when they flew south.  The area in Mexico where they hibernate is only 50 acres yet the entire Eastern US and southern Canada provides the habitat for reproduction of the 4 generations.  So it is this concentration of butterflies that is an absolute marvel.

PS  We took 4 taxis and 2 buses to go the 5 hours from Puebla to the Monarch Biosphere.