•October 2, 2019•
By Cheri Burcham
for the News Progress

Have you noticed more butterflies lately? Especially monarch butterflies? That is because it is the monarch migration season and these black and orange beauties are heading down to Mexico!
The Monarch – which is our state butterfly – is the only butterfly that I am aware of that makes this miraculous journey each year.
It ends and begins in Mexico. Monarch butterflies overwinter in areas of the central Mexican mountains where they semi-hibernate until it is warm enough to travel back north. In the spring, they start making their way north through the U.S., reaching as far as Canada.
However the butterfly that makes it all the way north is not the exact same one that left Mexico – it will be the great grandchild of that one!
As the butterfly heads north, it will stop along the way and lay eggs and then die. Those eggs are deposited only on milkweed plants and the caterpillars (larvae) that emerge will eat the milkweed until they grow large enough to pupate or develop into a chrysalis (cocoon).
They will take about 10 days inside that chrysalis to develop into a butterfly and then emerge – and continue the journey north. This continues for four generations and then what I call the “supers” emerge and that last generation will be the ones that make a 2500 mile journey back to Mexico. Those are the ones you are seeing now. Isn’t it amazing that they know exactly where to go but have never been there before?     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.