Greetings. Mostly for those who haven't seen these before... a large cluster. I would guess a couple hundred in all.
Merged 8 shots to get the whole cluster. A little toning not much else.
When my daughter was an infant I used to walk by a monarch tree almost every day and sort of became used to the scene. Only look at them once every few years now. I forget what a wonder it is. This time I wanted to capture them before they warmed up and were flying around so I went early. After a while, there would be these moments when 30 or 40 of them would fly off all of a sudden. I figured out there was a chickadee that was disturbing them. ;-)
I caught a few minutes this morning of a National Geographic Channel show on migrations. By chance, the portion I saw had a segment on monarch butterflies. It was good to have seen your images of them beforehand. One of the takeaways was that the caterpillars eat only milkweed plants (which contain a poison that doesn't affect the monarchs but stays in their systems and, through evolution of potential predators, protects them). Unfortunately, conversion of natural milkweed habitats to other uses is threatening the future of monarch butterflies.
Having lived here for over 40 years I'd forgotten what a wonder the monarchs are. Thanks for reminding me. The monarchs here went through a severe downturn in the 90's if I recall, but are slowly recovering. Not quite up to when I moved to Santa Cruz in the 70's but has returned well into the wondrous range. I'll try and get a shot that captures the scope of the grove of trees were the monarchs are when some are up in the air (sunny and warm). There may be a dozen or so of these clusters spread through the grove. There might have been 3 or 4 times as many in the 70's.
Nancy, they fly in in October, lay eggs (somewhere else) and die. The next generation leaves by December. I don't know if both generations roost in the trees or if just the first one does. In any event the clusters are around for about 3 months, give or take.
Large Monarch Cluster
