Does the monarch butterfly really migrate?

This fall, our Andy had a wonderful treat. He saw the monarch butterflies migrating soutti. And it was a sight to remember, Hundreds and thousands of the big brown beauties were winging their way over Texas. It took them several days to pass over a small town near the Pecos river. They fluttered and swooped over the hills and the prairies, There were stragglers to the edges of the vast army and Andy wondered if they were acting as scouts.

At sundown1v the weary travelers picked out certain locust trees. There they clustered and folded their wing tips together over their backs. Under the bright stars Andy found one locust tree covered in a brown blanket of migrating monarchs. They opened their soft wings when the sun poked his first beams of light over the hills, They took to the air, spread out and were on their way before the dew was gone from the prairie.

Maybe said Andy as he waved them goodbye! we shall meet again in the spring. For some of these butterflies will come back north to lay their eggs. They will return to the midwest, the far west, to Maine and over into Canada, This great migration happens every year. Clouds of monarch butterflies fly south for the winter and return in the spring,

Mama monarch lays her pale‑green, cone‑shaped eggs on a milkweed leaf. In three to five days they hatch into hungry little caterpillars. Their food is milkweed salad and they eat enough of it to burst their coats several times, For some reason, the monarch caterpillar is not eaten by birds. This cannot be because the birds fail to see them, for they are very showy fellows. They are tiger striped in black, yellow and white and they wear two horn‑shaped antennae on their heads. Maybe the birds leave the fat little fellows alone because they have an unpleasant flavor.

At last the caterpillars grow to their full size. Then they wrap themselves in crysalises that look like neatly rolled, pale green leaves. you can find them hanging under the milkweed leaves. Inside the hard shell the bodies are changing to butterflies while the  insects sleep. At last the hard chrysalises  crack open and bit by bit the full grown monarchs . struggle out into the air. The beautiful wings dry in the sun and spread out four inches wider They are rich orange color veined in brown and bordered in brown with a double row of white dots. The front tips have a wider dark border spotted with yellow and orange. And you can tell the boy monarchs from the girl monarchs. The boys have a dark spot on the third vein of each back wing.

Several generations of monarchs are born during each summer season. Come fall, word goes around and the full grown insects in the area start to congregate. A starting day is set and the great cloud of beauties start their long migration south. The trip may take several weeks. They winter in our southern states, around the Gulf of Mexico and way south of the border. Some stay south. The rest fly back in the spring and spread out all over the United States and the southern part of Canada.