The Monarch Butterflies
As the autumn days grow shorter in the pine forests on the Canadian borders & North America, a colourful band of travellers set out for the warmer lands of Central America flying around 2500 miles to arrive in the mountains of Mexico during the last days of October or the first days of November. 300 million butterflies arrive each year to the same five or six sites; and the high density of them transforms the evergreen fir trees into beautiful yellow and gold trees as the butterflies cluster. These fragile travellers are the beautiful Monarch butterflies. A few months beforehand they were caterpillars, newly hatched from their eggs. Travelling at up to 35 mph, they sometimes cover as many as 250 miles on a good day, but it will take them 6 weeks or so to reach their destination.
The Monarch Butterflies come to these forests looking for shelter from the wind, rain and cold. At the same time, the forest provides the butterflies with food and humidity to keep them alive during their hibernation period.
After a short resting period as chrysalids, they are butterflies and as soon as their wings are dry the insects are ready for their long flight to warmer places. With no parents to guide them, the butterflies join up with each other into huge swarms that fly like clouds of colour through the sky. Some only reach as far as
When summer comes again (at the end of March) to North America, these same butterflies leave the southern warmth and sweet flowers and fly back towards the pine forests in the north, laying their eggs on milkweed plants on which their caterpillars feed. The caterpillars eat the leaves of this milkweed plant also to take advantage of its poison in order to become poisonous butterflies for the birds that would otherwise eat them. This new generation of Monarchs will continue flying to the north until they reach the place from where their parents began flying several months before. After a short life of only 2 to 6 weeks this generation will mate, lay their eggs and die (but their butter-children or grand-butter-children) will soon make the long journey south again.
This process continues during spring and summer when Monarchs with a short life span brighten up thousands of gardens in Eastern Canada and
The monarchs or milkweeds as they are also known are certainly not the only insects that migrate, many others do too, but none flies so far as the amazing monarchs.
