Whispered Memories: A Monarch Butterfly's Flight

When we learn something, it becomes a memory that we can access to inform future decisions and behaviors. Repeated enough, that learning becomes instinct - the accumulation of memories passed down through the generations. Instinct is the dog biting a child who tries to take its food. It's the zip of adrenaline when someone follows us down a dark alley. It's the monarch butterfly, traveling tens of thousands of miles with nothing to guide it but a whispered memory embedded in its genes.

From The Ones We Choose, a novel by Julie Clark

 

I'm a fiction reader. Give me a good novel I can get lost in, and I'm happy to leave real life behind for a short time. And it's always a pleasant surprise when the book is written so beautifully that it's almost like poetry.

I finished The Ones We Choose by Julie Clark earlier this month. It was one I'd asked the Hutchinson Public Library to order, since I'd enjoyed Clark's other novel, The Last Flight, which was already in their collection. (I recommend both of Clark's novels.)

When I saw the description of the monarch butterfly, I took a photo of the page. I knew the majestic monarch butterflies would soon arrive in our backyard for the annual pilgrimage. I loved the idea that the butterfly knows where to go based on "a whispered memory embedded in its genes."

I suppose the phrase also resonated because I read it just before we left Kansas to travel to South Dakota to see Randy's brother at the hospice. The "whispered memories" are part of a human's life journey as well. No matter the disparate choices made by siblings in adulthood, there is a "whispered memory" of a shared history.

The butterflies typically take a "breather" on the north side of trees in our farmyard. 

As Randy was planting wheat last week, he found that the shelterbelts bordering the field also had the fall equivalent of miniature runways as the orange and black flying machines seemed to practice touchdowns and takeoffs like a student pilot practicing his/her craft. (It's not a good photo, but it sort of shows how we needed an air traffic controller for all the activity.)

 

I got one shot with multiple butterflies, but there definitely wasn't overcrowding in our annual Air bnb.

 

With the north wind, the butterflies seem to have departed for warmer climes after more than a week sheltering in our tree lines. I sure hope next year's monarchs will hear that "whispered memory" that brings them back to Central Kansas.

And I hope their ancestors stop by our pastures next spring to lay some eggs in the milkweed.

Ninnescah Pasture, June 2020

Dr. Orley “Chip” Taylor has been watching the populations of this large orange butterfly for years. He heads Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas, a group that coordinates the efforts of civilians and young students to tag monarch butterflies across the United States and Canada.

Monarch butterflies are not cold hardy and cannot survive our freezing winters. However, they are one of very few insect species that can feed on milkweed.

This milkweed bloomed in our pastures this summer.

Milkweed is cold hardy, with milkweed species growing all the way into Canada. Therefore the monarch butterflies fly north each year to take advantage of this milkweed food source.

  

Each spring, the adult butterflies that have overwintered begin flying north and laying eggs on milkweed. These generations of monarchs stair-step their way until some reach Canada.
With the approach of winter, they must fly south again.

On goldenrod - From Kim's County Line - September 2016

 

Unlike small rare butterflies that may depend on a single rare flower only found on a California mountaintop, the monarch butterfly is dependent on larger numbers of flowers during migration in order to sustain its migrating population, Taylor said.

 

The monarch butterfly is a “celebrity species” that attracts the attention of citizens concerned with preserving nature, Taylor said. This means that there are many online websites with information on the monarch butterfly—some of it accurate and some inaccurate. One accurate site is Monarch Watch. 

 

My friend, Pam, who I call my resident wildlife consultant, works for Kansas Wetlands Education Center. She discovered a roost of Monarchs in cottonwoods and willows along a channel at the nature center located near Great Bend. What a sight!

Pam produced this video of the "travelers." Check it out!

 

Yesterday, Quivira National Wildlife Refuge (which is only a few miles away from our house) posted a photo of monarchs from this past weekend near the Education Center there. If only I'd known ...