If you’re a fan of live butterflies, then there are few times of the year more exciting than late summer and early fall. That’s when the regal Monarch butterflies began their annual migration to Mexico. Goodbye cold climate, hello sun and warmth!
If you spend even a few minutes outside, you’ll likely see these travelers. This is the time of year that you witness what is sometimes referred to as directional flight. The butterflies are moving with a focus all day. They rest at night – roosting in safety from predators – but during the daylight hours they are hard at work on their Southward journey.
When you see them on flowers in your garden or alongside the road or in sunny fields, they aren’t kicking back and enjoying the scenery. Instead, they are resting those wings and partaking of the necessary nutrients to keep them in motion. That’s a long trip they take, and they don’t ever get to bum a ride.
A lot of people are deeply dedicated to the Monarch butterfly migration. They set up volunteer observation posts and spend hours counting the passersby. There aren’t enough scientists to record the data, and so amateur lepidopterists (yeah, we can use fancy words here at A Live Butterfly Garden) end up pulling a lot of the weight.
The long sojourn these butterflies make across the continent is a reminder of a couple things. First, for all their beauty and apparent fragility, butterflies are amazingly complex and beautiful insects. Millions and millions of these animals cover up to three thousand miles in a couple of months. That’s breathtaking. But equally breathtaking is the fact that they instinctively know how to do this – when to fly and where to fly. And as good as lepidopterology has become, we still can’t entirely answer just how they can do all that.
There is, then, a sense of both majesty and mystery in the annual migration of Monarch butterflies. And it makes for a good opportunity to reflect on the importance of caring for them. We can’t really take care of butterflies, but we can take small steps to improve how we live beside them. We like to think that human beings are the be-all-end-all of living creatures, but Monarchs can really put the lie to that.
What can we do to help out? You can volunteer to watch Monarchs. Be a part of the worldwide team that observes the migration by helping to collect data. Heck, make a good video and post it on youtube. It’s good to spread the word – you never know when you might convert someone.
And if you are feeling more ambition, you could consider planting a garden for live butterflies. Even a small space filled with plants and flowers conducive to butterflies, like a butterfly bush, can be helpful. You can plant a few stands of milkweed, which is so essential to Monarch butterflies. Heck, you can raise butterflies. Development means less and less space and resources are available to them – we can help remedy that.
It might not seem like much, but little steps to ensure that we are peacefully coexisting with butterflies can go a long way. And if the Monarchs can do it, so can we.