Mark Tillman, age 8, of Allentown, Pennsylvania., for his question:

Do monarch butterflies really migrate?

Yes, indeed they do. The big brown and orange butterflies really belong to North America because this is where they lay their eggs. Their greedy green caterpillars feed on our milkweed plants. Most other butterflies live only a few days or weeks. But the sturdy monarchs live through the winter. They do this by migrating south to warmer regions. Come fall, thousands of them gather and fly south to Florida ox' to California or to Mexico and some even go to Cuba. Come spring, they fly back north to lay more eggs on the milkweeds. The sturdy monarchs migrate hundreds of miles, there and back. A few years ago, some of them arrived in England    all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. But experts think that this was not a planned migration. It so happens that a mighty storm was raging over the ocean. Most likely those migrating butterflies were blown across the sea by accident. Sad to say, they could not get back. And in England there were no milkweeds to feed their hungry caterpillars.