Monarch butterflies use internal compass to find their way

Butterflies are amazing insect.  In a net of about 20 butterflies you can observe a community.  There is a certain order in this community were several butterflies have very obvious and distinct roles.  The leader is the one who helps the others spread their wings.  He is the frist to fly out and circle back to signal danger, safety or a path to a food source.  The 'nurse' is the one who always goes to the aid of the butterfly who has fallen or has a damaged wing.   I'm not surprised that they know how to ride the crest of a magnetic wave to fly to a warm safe environment.
 
 

We have Yarrow, Lantana, Pentas and other plants and flowers that attract bountiful butterlflies -- or, flutterbys, as some know them.

We are lucky.

And blessed.

Julia Masi, thank you for your entry.

I shall watch the butterflies in our gardens with new interest, insight and appreciation.

The Monarchs are a beautiful sight to see. The basketball-sized clusters are so thick you don't even realize what they are . At first they appear to be brown leaves, but then there will be a rustle and stir and a sudden fluttering of wings and you can see that there are hundreds of Monarchs in each cluster as the air fills with orange and black wings. It's a true wonder of nature. 
 
Every fall, the Monarch butterfly begins a long journey. It will take it some 1,800 miles (2,900 km) and four generations before they return to where they started.
 
What's sad is the Monarch population has dwindled 50 to 60%.  Monarch Watch is now encouraging all people to plant milkweed in their gardens and also encouraging each state to try to plant milkweed along highways and other areas where landscaping is done. I think all butterflies are in trouble, not just Monarchs.

I'm fortunate to live right around the corner from the eucalyptus grove where the Monarchs hang out..  here's a clipping>
 
Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, Ca
Monarch Butterfly Natural Preserve
The park's Monarch Grove provides a temporary home for up to 100,000 Monarchs each winter.   From roughly mid-October through mid-February, the Monarchs form a "city in the trees." The area's mild ocean air and eucalyptus grove provide a safe roost until spring. In the spring and summer, the butterflies live in the valley regions west of the Rocky Mountains where milkweed, the only plant a Monarch caterpillar eats, is plentiful.  Monarch migration is variable, and numbers vary each year.  Before you visit, you may want to call the park for current information on the population.

The Monarch Grove has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting the Monarchs and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. This is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. Access to the preserve area is limited to a handicap accessible boardwalk and observation area.

Monarchs begin arriving in October and most are gone by the first week of March. The grove contains eucalyptus trees which are located in a canyon, providing the Monarch needed shelter from the wind. These winter flowering trees are also a convenient food source for the butterfly. On chilly days when the temperature drops below 60 degrees, the butterflies cluster together in the eucalyptus trees for warmth. 

The park maintains a demonstration milkweed patch where visitors may view Monarch eggs, caterpillars and chrysalides. For about half a year, milkweed is the Monarch's home, super market and maternity ward. The Monarch larva eats only the milkweed plant. <

or, what else have they to do?

JULIA....... thanks for the wonderful butterfly info......
 
JANE........ it sounds beautiful where you live..............
 
One of our cats, Ringy, loves to chase butterflies all over the yard.........they land, she stalks, they fly, she chases.............I could think of worse ways to spend time........... 
 

bebe, your cat sounds like our cat

LOTLOT.......there's really nothing more wonderful than watching your beloved animals playing and enjoying themselves in nature........... long may they run......................

Monarchs  taste  bitter,  birds  remember,  and  leave  them  alone.   A  smaller  butterfly,  the  Viceroy,  copies  the  Monarch's  color  scheme,  an  adaptation  to  trick  birds  into  thinking  they're  bitter  tasting  Monarchs  as  well.

"I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or
whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man," wrote Chuang Tzu.
Unseen forces direct all of us and the Monarch butterfly represents the
mystical connection between science and the magic of nature and one day
we will see that everything is connected and love is a manifestation of
that truth. These creatures show us that the border between the U.S. and
Mexico was created by humans and is not recognized by the natural
world. 

bebe, our cat is a house cat but we take her outside early each morning and sometimes in the evening for a romp. It is the best time of our day. Watching her, we are entertained and rejuvenated. And when the butterflies are out to play, we are doubly enriched.

Ladies, as a former big dog person, I have been so blessed to have discovered the world of cats in the last three years. My new houseguests, Landon and Oz, have allowed me to share their world at their discretion. I accept it on their terms. The curious nature and the aloof cool manner has amounted to hours of entertainment and the cat door swings all day long as they bring presents from the animal kingdom to me in my office including a 3' snake and a bat. The butterfly chasing is a daily phenom along with stalking in the grass like a tiger or lion. I will always love the memories of my Old English Sheepdog and my yellow Lab but cats are amazing.   

As Uncaring as a Butterfly : 

More interesting is the Butterfly Effect, an aspect of chaos theory which refers to how small and insignificant changes in an event can trigger dramatic consequences. What kind of changes would you choose to make if you could go back in time? I think about what might have happened if my family had migrated to Australia in 1973 as we originally planned to, how different would my married life be if I had married someone else?...or maybe not even be married? We can't really change the past but as I stand at the present, I am suddenly reminded of the "butterfly effect" on my future each step I take now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5dVQfzjDS4

Arrrrrgggghhhhh!!!! Having problems with the computer. I'm not dead yet ...... Have budeleas in my garden, so lots of butterflies. This week in the UK, people are asked to go out for 15 minutes & count butterflies, so they can do a sort of butterfly census. Hope this connection stays connected, I've been driven mental by computer nerds on helplines all day.

hazel leese, wish we were in the UK just now to help count butterflies, walk through some of the English gardens, drive the country roads, spend some time in the tea shops and eat fish 'n chips. Been too long since we were there and it looks doubtful we will be there this year. But maybe soon. Maybe soon. Meantime, keep the butterfly count up.

TT........ welcome to the cat side of town.......they are wonderful & have very unigue personalities. I never tire of watching them & loving on them. Our huge chow/lab sleeps on the dog bed w/ one of the cats or sometimes 2. We call it their "interspecial love time." Enjoy every moment w/ them and all the joy they bring. ( A little OT, last week we were picking one of our dogs up at the vet after she had an operation and there was a young college student there holding his little kitten. it was a little siamese that he had adopted from the shelter ( where I'm on the board & volunteer)........ he was so loving w/ her and so happy that he had adopted her....... they made a great pair. ) A nice happy ending story.............

Back to the recent topic of rhectorical questions: If a tree falls in the forest & nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Butterflies don't make a sound unless they're battering themselves to death against your window trying to get out.
I think I told you I recently had a visit from an Elephant Hawk Moth,
When I was a kid, my brothers & I went into a long- abandoned house. The locals would not in there because of some sort of ju-ju. There were stacks of wooden drawers, like architect's plan chests, & every one we opened had a display of beautifully mounted butterflies or moths, all labelled. It was like opening jewel boxes.
In a couple of weeks, the Welsh Plums will be ripe, falling to the ground over-ripe & fermenting. The butterflies will be getting drunk on them.
Have any of you done butterfly collecting? As in catching them in a net, putting them in a jar with a chloroform-soaked wad of cotton wool, mounting them, AD, on a special board with a groove to place the body in & pinning out the wings with careful strips of paper ..... the coulour on butterfly  wings is like tiny fish-scales & very fragile .... somebody taught me that when I was .... 8 or 9 years old. I had to go to the Pharmacy with my Dad so he could sign for the chloroform. Gruesome.
I expect Paolos can find the line in a Leonard Cohen song that goes "I've been where you're hanging & think I can see how your'e pinned..."

HAZEL........ what an awesomely cool story about the mounted butterflies in the abandoned house. It's rather haunting that someone had so much passion to go to all that work & then it was just abandoned......... it makes you wonder......
 
BBG party at HAZEL's house later.... everyone bring a dish....................

Hi, bebe~ I'm a bit disenchanted with cats today. Tom Brown (cat) greets me in the morning with a head-butt, today he did such an enthusiasic job he gave me a nose-bleed. My lap-top is sort of hot-wired into a connection that works at the moment.......
The abandoned house was in East Africa. I think the old guy who lived there died. Families in the old days would send "the black sheep of the family" out to "the Colonies" & nobody would come to give them a funeral, except maybe their house-servants (paid, not slaves) I guess a lot of valuable stuff was lost to the predation of time & termites. But-but-but butterflies are ephemeral.
 
 

   Butterflies and affection...SOMEONE loves them, someone BIG, otherwise they wouldn't be provided with the knowledge-beyond instinctual- to make their crystalline nestling houses to change, and grow.  Where does their bonding instinct come from?Where does their thinking come from??  I once was in a little garden in my front yard in Japan, my home at the time- when I saw, quite close- but not close enough, a gorgeous multi-colored dragonfly.  I said to it : Oh, come here, honey, I want to see you., and immediately it came to my hand, quite close to my face, and hovered there long, till at last, I breathed, Oh, thank you.  And immediatly it left.  Yes!  And you know, if you are trying to get a spider out of the bathtub, if you calm down and connect, and say, Okay, now listen, I'm saving you, it will behave - (I keep a plume of pampas grass handy  to whisk them out)  -Truth!! And my eyes are not brown!  (to Hazel...) signed, green-eyed Auri

More 4 beeb~ Cat rescue???? I had 3 proper cat pens up the garden, sheds, bedrooms,  kittens galore. The funniest litter of kittys I was called out to rescue was in a garden shed of an old folks home, where their resident outside scrounger cat had made a wonderful nest in their stock of incontinence pads.

Butterflies galore in my yard after I was tweaked to take notice this morning. The euphoria of trimming my mint today is better than any herb I ever smelled (I take the Clinton did not inhale pledge) in college. It permeates the air and makes the iced tea or the julips or the mojitos explode with flavor. It is is one of those summer sense ticklers and is so weedlike even a wannabe green thumb like me can't screw it up. My sunflowers are humongous this year. 

auri~ It doesn't matter to me what colour your eyes are, but green eyes are ...  enviable?I'm enjoying dragonflies on my pond - some of them look a bit like Chinook (?) helicopters. And I have smaller ones that are shocking pink or electric blue & there are zillions of little froggies & toadies & bugs that have LCD lights in their bums at night. It could be worse!
So,auri~ party at my place tonight if my net connection doesn't crash - well, if it does, just come in through the back door - I know about the doorstep size burgers & all that stuff, do you have a dainty offering of some exqisite castle-in-the-air, yum yum, have to have some more some food? Me, I'd go for matoke &npeanut sauce.

Tommy Typical, we do not have sunflowers but out neighbor does so we get to enjoy them. Just saw them a little while ago. They too are as big as all of Texas. Brighten the neighborhood -- and our day.

Guys, I tried the keep the everything manicured look in the beginning and have since gone for the more natural "let it flow look". I let my vines climb on the brick and the crepe myrtles drape over the corners of the house and I like it better. I have these wildflowers on the creek bank and by the front porch and they are gorgeous. The hummingbirds and the butterflies come around and the june bugs buzz and the fireflies light up the night and if VISA were here they would call it priceless. I have my Picasso shirt from Mr. Peterman that I wear when I survey and it does not take much to make a man feel wealthy. 

Tommy  Typical:   I  acquire  the  "let  it  flow  look"  and  don't  need  the  deep  thought  to  acquire  it.    Had  a  young  man  on  my  roof  to  clean  out  the  gutters,   seems  I  had  some  corn  growing  4'  tall  in  the  gutters  of  the  garage.....lol

B- That is so funny. With the unemployment rate of kids so high these days, you are only creating your own stimulus package and growing your dinner at the same time. Sound thinking.   

TT: This is for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8

One of the farms I lived on as a small child was in the Monarch annual migration path. The enormous trees surrounding our house would for a week appear brown and withered, until we grasped the end of a long branch, slowly pulling it to the ground then releasing it. We dropped instantly onto our backs in the grass to watch the sky supernova in a stellar explosion.

HAZEL:
You asked about mounting butterflies.
Once when I went out in back from work for a cigarette break at a very large mall I saw a Luna moth on the ground. Not moving. And I've always been MAD that I didn't go in, get a box or something, and see if I could collect it.
It was such a beautiful thing and now I know how rear they are since they usually only go out at night.
Winged creatures are magic.

Love it JZ. Often, we go through our whole lives trying to get back the perfection we didn't recognize we had all along from the beginning.  Grow down I say. Blessings. I shall listen now to some vintage Michael Franks to continue on with the mellow topic matter of the day. Great weekend fodder.  

TT: I'm glad it made you smile. I listened to 4 Michael Franks tunes in return.

Paolos: 21 pages into Lamb. Laughing like a hyena. Thank you, your timing is as always, perfect.

That story top right of a page about Asian Carp ...... not sure what it has to with butterflies, but never mind. I now have this mental image of burkah-wearing goldfish infiltrating the lakes & rivers of the USA. & some uniformed warden standing on a riverbank telling the fish "No Entry Beyond This Point"

Bedtime for me - little butterfly kisses goodnight to all of you.

Tommy isn't there a migratory path for the monarchs that crosses I-65 North
of Nashville?  I recall seeing a butterfly crossing sign once, somewhere in the
neighborhood or was it a dream?
 
I often dream of butterfly tattoos migrating into my path.
 
 
As requested, sister hazel, sorry I missed you.

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBFQg7P5YKw&feature=related
 
Jax good to see you out and about again. 

 
I promised two little girls ice cream before story
time, if anyone else cares for a bowl, come on down.