It's going on right now around (most of) us.

No, not caribou or terns or some African species or even geese.

Butterflies. Specifically, monarch butterflies.



They are the only butterflies that migrate anything close to the distances that they do, and when you think about the distances in relation to body size it's just mind-boggling. This is an animal that might be 2" long and 4" across the wings, that floats and flutters through the air - that will cover 2,000 to 3,000 miles down and across the U.S. and into Mexico. That's a distance more than 90 MILLION times it's body size. To put that in context, an animal the size of a caribou would have to cover over 100,000 miles.

If you haven't paid attention, do yourself a favor and do so.

I find a 22 garden gun with #9 shot to be the most sporting here.

I got some trophies at home; I'll get some pics.

Let me add to this the migration of the ruby-throated hummingbirds. We'd be remiss to not mention Mickey's favorites (though I'm sure he'd be watching the monarchs as well).



Those little zippers will the same distances, and occasionally even more. Many will cross the entire Gulf of Mexico in a single, overnight flight.

Green Darners migrate too, they might be a little more sporting with a 22 garden gun and #9 shot.

http://www.migratorydragonflypartnership.org/index/about

Amazing creatures!

Thought this might be about Syrian dirtbags.

Same here.

So much for blooming where you're planted. Why can't they just be happy with their circumstances?

I knew about the migration of the Monarch, but I've never seen it put in terms of their size vs. distance; that's really cool. Thanks for sharing that.

Amazing creatures. Watching hummingbirds never gets old.

When you take into consideration that it takes several generations to do this it becomes even more Amazing.

Riding a motorcycle when they are migrating is a yellow mess.
Had to stop more than once to clean the windshield, and a lot of my black leathers were yellow.

I was introduced to a location on a higher elevation mountain in Montana where the Monarchs hatch by the millions, maybe billions? I was engaged in my "internship" with Dr. Charles Jonkel the bear biologist in Montana.

During this hatch we could watch dozens of bears grazing on the larva and the newly escaping butterflies as they came out of the Pupa stage. The Bears were just slowly walking along eating them by the bushel.

It seemed that these bears had this as a learned trait. They did not bother with them until the hatching began. We were trying to determine if there was a smell that called the bears to the area, or if they began to see them fluttering around and flying. Maybe that was the tigger point to get them into the area.

Years later My wife and I shot a big black bear, a huge one 465 lbs. It was digging into a nest on the ground. When we got to it, the nest was filled with lady bugs, Billions of them. It was only moments before they were crawling all over us. Skinning that beast was annoying as the lady bugs were crawling all over us in our hair, faces, and up our pant legs. During the drive home in the truck we were still picking them off of us, and several days later there were still live ones in my truck!

Never saw anything like that for a nest of lady bugs. Thankfully they were not fire ants, or hornets, we would have had to abandon that bear if they were!
_________________________

JJhack The migatory insects you saw in Montana might have been army cutworm moths rather than monarchs.The migrate from the plains to mountains in the spring and in great numbers. The moths need cooler temps and feed on spine flowers. They rest under rocks, etc. Grizzlies dig them out and feed on them. Bunches of them are a high calorie food source.

The globe skimmer dragonfly migrates very long distances.

I've got some wild growing violet colored flowers on the property that bring in the hummingbirds. Pretty cool to see them.

These same flowers have little hooks at their base that cause them to detach and hook onto my dogs when they go amongst them, giving them a decorative appearance. LOL.

I was always told lady bugs were good luck(probably because they eat aphids). One summer day about 6000 feet up in the Sierras I drove through thick clouds of them, and probably had thousands of them hit the truck. I never decided if that was really good or really bad luck

I was thinking deceased democrats flocking to the polls.

And the monarchs winter in a couple of very, very small remote locations in Mexico. If those locations are lost the entire species might collapse.

Not might; would.

Greatest migration?

Salt Lake City, Utah,...November 2016.

I only saw a few Monarchs up here this year, and that's been only in the last few weeks.
Think I read something a few months back about something that damaged the Monarch population this year.

There was a massive freeze in Mexico a couple years back that killed enormous numbers of them. Then, there's the problem with declining amounts of milkweed which is the only thing their larva eat.

It's happening, Florida is filling up with Yankees again, FML

Ya, in Mexico they go to a few mountain valley enclaves cool enough to slow down their metabolism but which don't freeze. The survivors stop and breed pretty much on the first milkweed they encounter coming back north in the spring, and then die.

Their offspring move north and again stop at the first milkweed they encounter, breed, and die. So that it may take five generations before Monarchs reach as far as Canada and Maine in late summer.

Instead of breeding, the last generation of the year turns around and migrates south.

Which means that they may be the great-great-great-grandchildren of the previous migratory generation.

Which means that the entire genetic repository of knowledge of where and when to migrate is passed unaltered through that many generations of a butterfly that in the egg stage is about as big as the head of a pin.

We've tagged migrating monarchs at our school several times over the years and had seven of several hundred tagged turn up in the big roost (El Rosario??), 600 miles south of San Antonio.

Birdwatcher

Good post and nice thread. A few years ago, our middle grandson (now 13, in Minn.) became interested in Monarchs during a science class and really went heavy with the research and raising them. He would go search to find the milkweed with eggs (do I have the correct term?) attached and incubate those in a nice terrarium. He also collected milkweed as needed.

He and his little sister were completely attentive. observant and fascinated with the process. The BIG days were when they turned one out to fly away. When one folded somewhere in the process, it was a very bad day.

He is a good teacher too - from him I learned a lot, including much of what is posted here.

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) perform annual migrations across North America which have been called "one of the most spectacular natural phenomena in the world".[1]

Starting in September and October, eastern/northeastern populations migrate from southern Canada and the United States to overwintering sites in central Mexico where they arrive around November. They start the return trip in March, arriving around July. No individual butterfly completes the entire round trip; female monarchs lay eggs for the next generation during the northward migration[2] and at least five generations are involved in the annual cycle.

Similarly, the western populations migrate annually between regions west of the Rocky Mountains including northern Canada and overwintering sites at the coast of California.

Monarchs also perform small distance migrations in Australia and New Zealand. There are also some populations, for instance in Florida and the Caribbean, that do not migrate. Recently discovered overwintering sites have been identified in Arizona and northern Florida.[3][4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_butterfly_migration

Fantastic that these little creatures can migrate all the way to Mexico.

Damn! Bilingual too?