Monarch Flyover

Yesterday, while working in our country garden, we were rewarded with an inspiring sight. Riding the gusting southerly winds on fragile wings, dozens of monarch butterflies were on their way back to the US and Canada. For over an hour the exodus continued, twos and threes and tens. Some flew high, just specks in the sky. Others skimmed the treetops of our cedar hedge. A few slackers dipped down for a pull of nectar from our calendula flowers. Relentlessly they kept their course, plotted by their tiny insect on-board computers, following magnetic fields North.

Their departure was a bit late this year. It has been an unusually chilly March, Cold Front #34 just having blown through last week. Happily, it was one of the larger flights we have seen in recent years. Newspaper had reported a 30% increase in the population this year, but I wonder about those figures, given the acreage of fir trees that has been cut in the nearby forests of Michoacan. And just how were those population estimates made? Still, it was encouraging to see so many and hope, for a moment, that this unlikely migration might continue into the future.