Field Notes—

  Monarch Journeys 

By Dottie Evans

The fall migration of monarch butterflies is as reliable a signal of the changing seasons as leaves turning red and gold –– so reliable, in fact, that when I don’t see monarchs, I worry.

Because I count on my yearly monarch fix, their decreasing numbers over recent years due to widespread agricultural spraying and loss of habitat is an ongoing concern.

Spotting a monarch in flight as it flaps and flops from here to there makes me smile. Noticing that the September and October flight of monarchs is nearly always in a southerly direction is even more satisfying. I like knowing they are on their way “home” to Mexico.

Godspeed, and all’s right in my world.

The mere thought of any creature this fragile flying some 2,000 miles from Canada or Connecticut to spend winter in the pine mountain forests of Central Mexico is almost incomprehensible to me. How do they know where and when to go?

It’s not like any particular individual monarch has ever made that long journey twice. Far from it. The butterfly that I saw this morning while walking in the high meadow at Fairfield Hills is several generations removed from its ancestor that migrated north from Mexico last spring.

Three or four weeks out of its chrysalis or cocoon, today’s monarch might have hatched as a caterpillar from an egg that was laid a month or two ago somewhere in New Jersey. Since each female butterfly lays approximately 400 eggs, the numbers flying north should be increasing with succeeding generations.

From Mexico to Texas to Ohio to Upstate New York to Connecticut to Canada, more and more monarchs follow the milkweed north as it blooms. Their eggs are laid on the undersides of milkweed leaves, and those leaves are the caterpillars’ sole food source.

Adult monarchs feed on milkweed flowers –– but not exclusively. They can also be found nectaring on many other wildflowers that grow in unmowed fields, along roadsides, and in gardens where there has been no spraying of pesticides, herbicides, or insecticides.

Somewhere embedded in a brain that is no bigger than a pinhead, there is the knowledge that if this is October (when the sun’s angle, the average temperature, the amount of daylight, and the wind direction are just right) then it’s time to go.

By the time of the fall migration, there should be some 300 million monarchs across the United States all thinking the same thing. Those that make it to the Mexican roosting sites gather in huge clusters and hang from the tree branches. They are kept warm by their massed bodies and they enter a dormant state until March when the temperatures rise. Then they wake up and head north again, the first generation getting as far as Texas.

Monarch migrations always remind me of my own end-of-summer passages.

I recall a particular sighting in late September 1997 when I was driving my daughter’s car back to Connecticut from Illinois where I had left her to start her first job in Chicago. While traveling straight east across Indiana, I kept seeing the monarchs’ dipping flight as they passed over the highway dozens at a time. They were always moving from left to right –– which was south. For some reason this made me think of how far my daughter and I had both come since I first held her as a baby in the crook of my arm.

Then there was the time in late August 1999 during a family vacation to Cape Cod when I saw monarchs flying over the goldenrod growing along a beach road. They reminded me that summer was nearly over, but I’d be starting a new job when I returned. I recall a vague feeling of sadness mixed with anticipation.

In September 2000, we drove the last “child” to college in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. While there for the weekend, he and his father played a round of golf and I walked the course. Lagging behind, I sat in the shade by a small stream where I spied three, fat yellow and black monarch caterpillars devouring a milkweed plant.

I wondered if those caterpillars would turn into butterflies in time to migrate. I also wondered how it would feel for me to return home to an empty nest.

Monarch butterflies are all about endings and beginnings and journeys in-between.