The Perils and Joy of Butterflies at Sea
To save or savor Monarchs during their autumn migration to Mexico
ALTHOUGH IT IS ONE of the most intrepid animals on Earth, a Monarch really has no business at sea. The sea is for gulls and gannets, whales and sharks, and by no means a butterfly weighing no more than a few drops of saltwater.
In the event of a water landing, well, actually there is no water landing for a butterfly — only death. Which is why it was odd and yet wonderful to encounter 200 Monarchs in a meadow of purple asters and yellow goldenrods on an island, called Monhegan, 11 miles at sea in the Gulf of Maine here in North America.
Monarchs in September have better things to do than dance among wildflowers on a tiny island, not the least of which is to fly south for winter. A million years of evolution had directed the butterflies to leave their flowers, to launch out to sea southwest on a journey they had never undertaken, a migration guided by the winds and the sun and the Monarchs’ genetic memory and destiny, a journey of 2,400 miles toward wintering grounds in Mexico.
But the Monarchs did not leave Monhegan Island that day. Headwinds from the south bottled them up near the shoreline, where they floated around and sipped nectar from their flower patch, which measured only about 15 meters in diameter. Wayward Monarchs happen all the time on Monhegan, but in a quarter-century of my visiting the island never had I seen them like this.
So there beside the bonfire of orange, yellow and purple I stopped to consider my options. I had two:
Option One would be to photograph the butterflies for my work as a field biologist (yeah, I actually get paid to take pictures of butterflies).
Option Two would be to catch as many of the Monarchs as I could in my net and tag them with little stickers so that their journey could be tracked as part of a community science research project. (I’ve had four tagged Monarchs make it to Mexico.)
Each option — employment or science — seemed worthy. So which did I choose?
