AdventuresInNature

Where are the monarchs?

We’re not talking about kings and queens, but something more ancient and worthy.

We’re talking about the monarch, or milkweed, butterfly.

Late summer and early autumn is the time of year for their annual migration from the United States to a remote range of misty mountains in Mexico, where they spend the winter.

They travel by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, and are as easy to spot as New Jersey tourists headed to Florida.

(Fortunately for those of us with a weak stomach, monarch butterflies – unlike Yankee migrators -- don’t wear sandals and black knee socks.)

First, let me describe a monarch butterfly.

What they don’t look like are other butterflies. Monarch are big rascals, reddish-brown (I prefer "orange") in color, with wings edged in black.

The arduous trip they take each fall is one of nature’s most amazing journeys.

Thin as a wisp and fragile as a piece of colored Kleenex, these long-distance travelers leave North America in late August and September. They bob, weave and dawdle down the landscape like a reluctant little boy returning home in late evening.

By the time they reach their destination in Mexico, many will have flown into the teeth of tropical storms along the coasts and into autumn hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico – an endurance marathon that leaves them ragged by journey’s end while putting Lance Armstrong to shame.

They seldom fly higher than the tops of buildings, so they’re always visible. They flit along highways, through fields, down river valleys.

Anglers on lakes and rivers are likely to see them bobbing just above the water during migration. Dove hunters in the cut corn fields of September see so many that the monarch appears to be part of the scenery, and the long journey is interpreted as routine.

Hardly.

Of the millions making the journey, not a single one has made the trip before. Tired and tattered, the bulk of them will successfully complete the 2,000-to-3,000-mile, one-way migration and will spend the winter in the Mexican mountains.

But they don’t have what it takes to reverse the journey in the spring. The returning survivors will lay eggs on milkweed plants along the way, and successive generations will hatch and finish the job.

Where they acquired such navigational skills without Boy Scout training and a GPS remains a mystery.

But I wonder: Are they just late this year, or has something happened? Normally I would have seen lots of monarchs while on summer fishing excursions. They’re common, even before the fall migration begins.

So far, I haven’t seen a one. Perhaps they know something we don’t – that summer will hang on a little longer than normal this year.

However, when dove season opens, if I don’t see hundreds of the beautiful orange-and-black creatures dawdling slowly south and southwest while I’m scanning the low horizon for incoming doves, I’ll know I’ve got one more thing to worry about.

END