Tag Archives: Danaus plexippus
Monarchs passing through now…don’t miss them
In case you haven’t seen your first monarch butterfly of the fall migration, you should start looking now. Mid-October is peak monarch observation month in Texas. So what is fall migration and why all the fuss about monarch butterflies? Monarchs are one of relatively few insects that have true migration. And one of the few migrant animals who instinctively travel thousands of miles to an overwintering site they have never seen before. The monarch migration starts each spring with old butterfly adults that have overwintered on a dozen… Read More →
For Monarchs not all milkweeds are equal
Graceful and beautiful at the same time, the sight of a Monarch butterfly never fails to lift my heart. In Texas, Monarchs are harbingers of both spring and fall. In the spring, Monarchs are seen traveling north to exploit the emerging crop of milkweed plants favored by their caterpillars. In the fall, Texas serves as a flyway for southward migrating butterflies, as most of the U.S. eastern population of Monarchs heads toward their overwintering habitat in Michoacan State, in the Sierra Madre mountains west of Mexico City. In recent years, however,… Read More →
Forget honey bees, worry about Monarchs
Don’t misunderstand me. I like honey bees. And like most people I talk with, I’m aware of the threat to honey bees posed by the latest calamity facing beekeepers, the “colony collapse disorder”. Managed bee colonies in our country and around the world are dying off at alarming rates. And this is not good. But honey bees are not native to the New World. If all the honey bees in the U.S. were to die tomorrow, agriculture would take a devastating hit, and we would see an immediate… Read More →