For the past week or so, the shelter belts at The County Line have been the fall equivalent of miniature runways as orange and black flying machines seemed to practice touchdowns and takeoffs like student pilots practicing their craft.
 |
| You have to look closely. They are camouflaged in the leaves and branches. |
Monarch butterflies used the protection of our trees to shelter during their migration journey. But they flit in and out of the leaves as people amble by. They move so quickly that it's hard to capture their swoops and dives.
Randy's attempt yielded a pretty photo of clouds and silo.
I didn't even do that well. I had to dig through some old blog posts to find a mediocre flight photo to post of our fall visitors. Today, it seems most of the butterflies have departed.
Monarch butterflies are truly miraculous.
That's quite a reminder for this change-challenged person. They are the ultimate symbol of transformation. As George Carlin once quipped, "The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity."
I'm not sure that's true of monarch butterflies. It sounds like a lot of work to me to travel for two months, across thousands of miles, bucking wind and rain and predators. And it's all to get to a destination they've never visited before.
The butterflies will only make this journey one time. So how do they know where to go? It is just another miracle of God's creation. Researchers say that it appears to be a combination of directional aids such as the magnetic pull of the earth, the position of the sun and the availability of milkweed, where the butterflies lay their eggs. No matter the reason, they are a beautiful signal of fall.
 |
| File photo from Kim's County Line |
They begin the journey in their summer home in Canada and the northern regions of the U.S. They are headed for a mountain range 70 miles west of Mexico City in central Mexico, where they find the perfect habitat to survive November through March in the Oyamel forests.
 |
| File photo from Kim's County Line - Taken at Quivira National Wildlife Refuge |
60 Minutes had a segment last year from Anderson Cooper about witnessing the Monarchs in Mexico. Click HERE to check it out, if you'd like.
