Monarch butterfly

The weather of the past week has been so pleasant! I love to look out of the glass windows at the break area in the office and see the flags weaving in the gentle wind and the leaves dancing in the bright sunshine ... As David said one day:" Wouldn't you love to be a squirrel, who can climb up high and sit on the roof or the tall tree to see everything around?" To me, one unpreceeding joy at this time of the year is to watch the Monarch butterflies! Did you see the big beautiful brown and black butterfilies gliding in front of you these days? I often wonder how these tinest creation can have such a huge sense of direction. And they seldom travel in big group. One here, one there. They must have tremendous power to overcome loneliness. After reading some articles on the Monarch butterflies, I found these interesting facts about them:

"The Monarch butterfly is known by scientists as Danaus plexippus, which in Greek literally means "sleepy transformation." The name, which evokes the species' ability to hibernate and metamorphize, is actually inspired by the Greek myth of Danaus, in which the daughters of Danaus, king of Libya, flee Libya for Greece in order to avoid marrying their cousins. The long, migratory journey of the Monarch butterflies is reminiscent of the daughters' flight.

Monarch butterflies are also easily distinguishable due to pattern seen on their wings. They have a very distinct orange and black pattern; females have darker veins on their wings and males have a spot on the center of each hindwing. Adult Monarchs possess two pair of brilliant orange-reddish wings, featuring black veins and white spots along the edges. Their wingspan is about four inches, and they weigh less than half an ounce. Males, who possess distinguishing black dot (stigmata) along the veins of their wings, are slightly bigger than the females.

It is a known fact that around 5 million Monarch butterflies from areas of North America travel to smaller sites that are scattered along the coast of California. These beautiful butterflies also follow the same migration pattern every year. Each adult butterfly lives only about four to five weeks. But one of the many wonders of the Monarchs is the annual creation of a unique "Methuselah generation." As autumn approaches in their sites of migratory origin, a very special generation of butterflies is born. Unlike their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents -- all of whom had ephemeral lives measured only in weeks -- these migratory butterflies survive seven or eight months. In human terms, given our average life span of 75 years, this would be like having children who lived to be 525 years old!This generation performs the incredible feat of flying from Canada and the United States to the center of Mexico -- after which they begin the northward journey again. Once they reach the United States, a kind of relay race begins: their short-lived offspring, with only four or five weeks to live, continue making the trek northward over several generations.

Of all migrations by small creatures, few are as astonishing as the one performed by the Monarch butterfly. The embodiment of fragility, these insects travel between 1,200 and 3,000 miles or more between their starting and ending points -- a feat without parallel. What is even more remarkable is that the ones that return to the places where Monarchs hibernate have never been there before. These are the great-great-great-grandchildren of those that performed the intrepid journey from southeast Canada and the United States to central Mexico.
Like several species of birds, bats and whales, the Monarch butterfly of Canada and the United States migrates to places where the climate is less extreme. Winters are too cold in the places where the butterflies reproduce; Monarchs would not be able to withstand either heavy snowfall or the lack of plants on which larval caterpillars feed. As such, the Monarch heads south each fall, where it will stand a greater chance of survival-as well as the chance to "return" to reproductive sites in North America and give rise to future generations of reproductive adults that will complete the annual cycle.

It is also believed the Monarch butterfly uses the magnetic field of the earth to migrate. They also depend on the position of the sun as well. The Monarch butterflies that migrate southward in the autumn are guided by the sun's orbit as they travel through North America. Even on cloudy days they stay on track thanks to an internal biological compass that functions according to the movement of the sun.

The migration moves at a pace of about almost 50 miles a day, though there are some butterflies that have flown up to 80 miles in a day. Throughout the migration, they continue to store and replenish energy each day by extracting nectar from flowers they encounter along the way. But the butterflies also suffer from illnesses and infections that can be fatal, and must face other dangers including bad weather, predation by birds during hibernation, and big losses in the population due to winter storms.

At the end of October and the beginning of November, after traveling two months, the butterflies settle into hibernation colonies in the mountains of central Mexico, where the States of Mexico and Michoacan meet. There they will spend the winter hibernating.From mid-October until mid-February, the Monarchs' hibernation colonies remain relatively stable. The monarch groups congregate or meet at the same places each winter, where the trees may be completely covered with monarchs. In Mexico, there have been observations that suggest the Monarch butterfly sleeps in the winter in the branches and trunks of fir trees. Sometimes, due to a large group of these Monarch butterflies, a branch may tend to get heavy with the weight, which results in the breaking of the branch. During the second half of February, when temperatures rise and humidity decreases in the forests, the butterflies come down from the slopes to mate. And the butterflies that survive the hibernation in Mexico return in the spring to the southern United States."

*********************
David and I worked on the nursery these days. It looked much better. Through trial and error, we learned how to put up the wall border. The bedding set brightened the room instantly. I started to put things in the suitcase too. Yesterday I went in to see the doctor because of the excess swelling on my right foot. Dr. Thomas examined everything and it was fine. He said the reason that my right foot swells more is because Emily stays on the right side of my tummy a lot. That presses on the veins to the right leg and foot. I did notice that Emily likes to stay on the right side. But I never linked that to the swelling ... I was really thankful for Dr. Thomas to work me in. My 36th week checkup will be next Thursday...