Make Way for the Monarch

Birds are not the only creatures heading south for the winter. Monarch butterflies are filing the skies, heading to winter grounds in central Mexico. The changing colors of the tree leaves get most of the attention of travelers in late September into October, but for those with the patience to stop and look around comes the reward of seeing the majestic orange and black wings of this large butterfly as it stops at fall asters, sunflowers, goldenrod and other flowers for food to power its trip south.

Biddeford Pool, Maine, Sept. 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

Think about it: This butterfly, which weighs next to nothing, has to travel thousands of miles if it is going to live to fly north in spring, find plants suitable for laying eggs and then die. The travel is treacherous. Winds blow them off course, forcing them to use precious energy to keep going. I've seen monarchs traveling over water as they hug the coast, such as the dozens MH and I saw along the coast of Maine, undeterred by strong northwest winds pushing them from the side.

Monarch and bees on sunflower, Morris Townwhip, NJ, Sept. 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

They must avoid other hazards - hungry birds, spider webs (I've saved many a monarch from a web laid across a thick bush of dune rose. Have you?), careless humans accidentally or intentionally catching and killing them. Like the birds, they keep going. They are programmed to do this. If you provide them with suitable plants, they will stop in your yard and then continue. I've seen monarchs take advantage of all the flowering autumn mums currently offered by garden centers for suburban front doorways, for instance.

We hear about the importance of milkweed to the life cycle of monarch butterflies and other pollenators, and I've been seeing more and more of the plants growing in local parks and roadsides. But the flowers still blooming at this time of year - coneflowers, butterfly bush, asters, goldenrod - are, to me, just as important because without them the butterfly would not be able to travel far and would be killed by the inevitable cold weather.

There are many other butterflies, of course, but monarchs are threatened by habitat loss in Mexico. Up here, in my part of the world, unless you have planted many types of flowers to draw butterflies, you won't see them much if you have the usual kinds of nonflowering shrubs planted to make it as easy on the homeowner (and landscaping crew) as possible.

(Margo D. Beller)

This year's weather was not kind to my butterfly plants, which is why I have seen few monarchs in my yard. The spring rains washed out a lot of the soil where the joe-pye weeds grow, resulting in few, spindly plants and fewer pink flowers. The orange butterfly weed - a type of milkweed - bloomed and busted earlier still. I no longer grow asters - something I should rectify - and the type of goldenrod I grow did most of its blooming in the heat of summer.

Luckily, I have seen many other flower gardens elsewhere that have been drawing monarch butterflies, and for that I'm grateful.

Searching for Color

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.  
― Ernest Hemingway, "A Moveable Feast"

I don't know when this ritual of looking for trees filled with dying, colorful leaves began. Doubtless, the good people of Vermont knew a good thing when they saw it, drawing those of us in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere up to New England to drive around, stay at a hotel, help the local economy and watch leaves color, die and fall without our having to sweep them up.

Ashokan Reservoir, Catskills, NY, Oct. 2017
(Margo D. Beller)

Watch a weather forecast and there's someone telling you which areas are "peak" or close to it. Look online and google "fall foliage" and see what you find. Regional websites, weather websites, tourist websites all trying to draw you to their regions to look at the colorful, albeit dying leaves.

This week I've swept dozens of long, hard, black pods from the black locust tree to the curb to allow MH to cut our lawn one last time before the raking begins. Plenty of leaves and pods to come. I can put some leaves into my compost pile but my pile is only so big and there is always too many leaves.

Rondout Reservoir during a brief moment of sunshine.
This and Ashokan are among the reservoirs that supply New
York City with water. (Margo D. Beller)

In my part of NJ this year the color isn't all that good. Yes, the dogwoods, Virginia creeper vine and some maples are showing red, some of the elms are starting to go yellow and some of the white oaks are going brown. But the overall picture is one of rain-starved trees trying to drop dully, tattered leaves as fast as they can to save energy and thus themselves for next year.

Yards with yellow and red maples are already covered with leaves so thick you can't see the grass. The whine of the leaf blower is heard throughout the land.

And yet, here was MH and me on a recent Sunday driving north to the Catskill Mountains, looking for color. Any excuse to get out of the house. Most of the day was cloudy and breezy and far from the expected 80 degrees, thankfully. At Rondout Reservoir in the Catskill Mountains of NY, a source of NYC's water, there suddenly appeared cormorants, common loons and ringbilled gulls in the water, and a shrieking redtailed hawk over my head.

Below, in the still-blooming daisies and goldenrod were Monarch butterflies. These delicate creatures were holding fast to the flowers in the breeze. They are flying south to Mexico for the winter, an amazingly hard journey for these little fliers.

(Margo D. Beller)

Rondout was our birdiest stop. The other reservoir we visited, Ashokan, had a great blue heron but not much else. As MH persisted in telling me, this was a leaf-peeping trip, not a birding trip. I watched the scenery go by and every so often got a surprise, such as the mature Bald Eagle sitting in a tree over the Neversink River or the female Common Mergansers in a pond near where we stopped to stretch our legs.

But color? Not so much.

Meanwhile, back at home, we've had a spate of clear, sunny, warm days and cool nights. More leaves are turning color. But is MH satisfied? Of course not, and when you read this we will be on the road again, this time in another state, looking for that mystical "peak."

King (and Queen) of the Skies

On a boat headed north to the Maine shore several Septembers ago from Monhegan Island, about 10 miles from the mainland, a monarch butterfly passed us heading south. A butterfly over open water?

Well, yes. When your internal clock says it's time to head home, that's what you do, even over open water, high over mountains or through local parks. You flap your little wings and push on.

Anytime in September into October, when the winds blow from the north, you are as likely to see a monarch butterfly flying overhead as you are a raptor.

There was the time one came so close to the field at a recent college football game I was afraid it was going to get tackled. Or the time my husband and I were looking at a tree in a Chicago park late one afternoon and realized what we thought were leaves were dozens of roosting monarchs. Or the time MH and I were hiking single file through a field of goldenrod at Sandy Hook, N.J., and a cloud of monarchs rose up and hovered over his head while he walked on oblivious.

I like monarchs. They are big and easy to identify, unlike a lot of other butterflies. Their orange wings contrast very nicely on purple aster or thistle or especially yellow goldenrod. For something so small they are amazingly tough. They have to be.

Monarchs migrate, as birds do. But they have a more interesting story. According to one website I found, once the monarch makes its way north from its winter home in Mexico (some winter in southern California) it goes through several generations - a butterfly goes from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult in six to eight weeks - before the fourth-generation adult butterfly heads south in September or October to winter and then starts the cycle anew.

As with migrating birds, you don't think about the hardship that something weighing mere ounces goes through traveling hundreds of miles. I'm sure the one I saw in Maine was heading to Monhegan to rest and fuel up for the next leg of its journey. But during the same Maine trip I rescued two monarchs from spiderwebs laid across the flowers the butterfly needs to feed on. I could only hope they made it the rest of the way.

Even if the monarch makes it to its winter home it isn't necessarily safe. According to a different website I found, the butterfly's winter home in central Mexico is endangered by logging and overdevelopment of agriculture. Those monarchs that winter in southern California are finding the area more built up. Climate change may also create wetter, warmer conditions that could mess up a monarch's life cycle.

That's tough for a delicate little butterfly. Luckily, the monarchs inspire humans.

In southern California there is a concerted movement to provide more roosting trees as well as milkweed plants for the female monarchs to lay their eggs in. The caterpillars need milkweed to survive.

In central Mexico, there are four monarch butterfly sanctuaries and people have figured out they can make green and be green showing the ecotourists around them rather than cutting down all the trees. Just do a Google search under "monarch butterfly migration mexico tours" and you'll see what I mean.

I don't feel the need to travel to Mexico to see monarch butterflies in winter when they can be seen so easily right now, but it is very nice to know there are efforts to protect them. When they land on my butterfly bush to feed I know I've made my small contribution to their continuation.

Long may they reign.