There's a certain satisfaction in realizing that you're in the middle of a tropical rain forest (or - at least the citified version) and missing the polar express temperatures at home.
For the past two winters, Randy & I would have been in Kansas, trying to stay warm as we fed and watered cattle. My January photo on the family calendar has a snowy scene of a water delivery last winter. We didn't have hired help the past two years, so we had to stay fairly close to home since cattle seem to want to eat every day. Our cattle herd's Uber Eats was powered by Kim & Randy.
It's probably no surprise to anyone who knows me that the Butterfly House at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston was my favorite exhibit. And that's where we found the "rain forest."
Because we aren't caring for our cattle ourselves this winter, we took advantage of a few extra days away after K-State's game. One of those days, we visited the museum.
It was a lot easier to take a photo of our "tour guide" than it was the flittering and fluttering guests of honor. He didn't move the whole time we were in the exhibit. But he doesn't have quite the visual appeal as his flighty neighbors.
These rice paper butterflies were abundant. With their wafer-paper thin wings, it was easy to see where they get their name.
Rice paper butterflies
The blue butterflies were much more elusive and much less cooperative. I never saw them away from the windows of the solarium.
Their inelegant perch didn't make for beauty shots.
Cornflower blue is probably my favorite color. I would have loved to get a better shot of this blue beauty.
While the colors on the other butterflies were more reminiscent of the Monarch butterflies who travel through our area each fall, there were many more varieties.
The museum estimates there are 1,500 to 2,000 individual butterflies in the exhibit at any given time. There are 60 or so species of butterflies from
tropical regions such as Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central and South
America.
Leopard lacewing
A sign told us to watch for numbered butterflies. A couple of butterflies photobombed the sign as I was taking the photo!
Randy's sharp eyesight spotted one. It wasn't the prettiest photo, but we saw No. 23, nonetheless.
Advice from a Butterfly:
Let go of the past
Trust the future
Embrace change
Come out of the cocoon
Unfurl your wings
Dare to get off the ground
Ride the breezes
Savor the flowers
Put on your brightest colors
Let your beauty show.
-Unknown
That seems like good advice on this first month of the new year!
While it wasn't as warm as the rain forest, the moderate Houston temperatures also led to an expedition on the Hermann Park Golf Course. We don't have skyscrapers visible on the Stafford golf course - unless you count our prairie skyscrapers - grain elevators.
We'd been to another part of Hermann Park for K-State's pep rally before the Texas Bowl.
We won the game vs. LSU, 42-20. (I had more Texas Bowl photos on my Facebook page.)
But the next day, we were back in Hermann Park for golf.
I rode along. Randy's golfing companions were a trio of guys who regularly play the course. They provided lots of free advice.
It was still shirt-sleeve weather when we checked out another Houston attraction, the Waterwall, later that day.
Designed by SWA Group and completed in 1985,
the 2.77-acre park in the Uptown District features a 64-foot-high,
sculptural fountain popularly known as the Waterwall.
The Water Wall pumps 78,500 gallons of recycled water every 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Another stop that warmed our hearts was a visit with Randy's Aunt Lorene, Uncle Gary and cousin Garrick. It had been awhile since we'd seen them.
The whole getaway was fun - with the exception of the Houston traffic. Randy only got honked at three times. We'll call that a success!
I don't remember many songs from Alice in Wonderland ... with the exception of one. It's the one the White Rabbit sings as he's dashing across the meadow.
I'm late, I'm late,
For a very important date.
No time to say, "Hello," "Goodbye,"
I'm late, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late! ...
I run and then I hop, hop, hop
I wish that I could fly
There's danger if I dare to stop
And here's the reason why ...
You see I'm overdue
I'm in a rabbit stew
No time to say "Goodbye" "Hello,"
I'm late, I'm late. I'm late!
The White Rabbit was late for his appointment with the Queen of Hearts. But it's the "queens" of the fall - Monarch butterflies - that seem to have been late this year at my house. Unlike the White Rabbit, they aren't limited to "hop, hop, hopping." But their "air traffic" seems to have been delayed (kind of like those poor Southwest Airlines passengers over the weekend).
Usually, the Monarchs arrive in September around the shelterbelts near our home. And my unofficial nature consultant and friend, Pam, posted a spectacular photo of the butterflies roosting near Cheyenne Bottoms almost a month ago.
But I had only seen a few. However, on Saturday as Randy was planting wheat, he called and said he was stirring up butterflies as he drove along some tree rows. On my first attempt to find them, I saw a few, but they weren't landing for long enough to click the camera shutter. Later on Saturday, after the front moved in, I was able to "capture" a few in my camera lens.
Butterflies are truly miraculous.
If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.
- Author Unknown
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.
County Line photo from 2019
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. As many as 300
million spend the winter there. Wouldn't that be a sight to see?
It's not like ducks and geese which migrate year after year. They 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 ... whether they are late or not.
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.
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 ...
We need air traffic control on the County Line these days.
A walk through trees stirs up butterflies swooping on air currents while they dodge darting dragon flies. With the wind blowing the past two days, the migrating Monarchs look for a respite in the shelterbelts and tree lines.
At a hay auction last week, I spotted a woolly bear caterpillar. A retired farmer saw me taking photos and told me I could start my own meme. (Who knew he'd know about memes!?) And I asked him, "Aren't they supposed to be a sign that winter is coming?"
He confirmed my recollection of folklore, and a Google search when I got home brought me a little more information. Here’s the legend: The woolly bear caterpillar has 13 distinct segments of either rusty brown or black. The wider the rusty brown sections (or the more brown segments there are), the milder the coming winter will be. The more black there is, the more severe the winter.
It appears we could be in trouble. But since it's been 80-degrees-plus the past two days, winter seems eons away. And who has time to worry about that when another sign of fall is moving through my backyard? With several of my friends posting congregations of Monarchs hanging out in their trees, I know I'm not alone in having an "air bnb" in the backyard.
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. The monarch butterflies fly north each year to take advantage of this milkweed food source. But they must migrate back to Mexico each winter.
Each spring, the adult butterflies that have overwintered begin flying north and laying eggs on milkweed. These generations of monarchs stairstep their way until some reach Canada.
Butterflies are truly miraculous.
If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.
- Author Unknown
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.
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. As many as 300 million spend the winter there. Wouldn't that be a sight to see?
They aren't like ducks and geese which migrate year after year. They 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. No matter the reason, they are a beautiful signal of fall.
As I was mowing on Friday, I almost had a mid-air collision with this beauty taking a breather in a pear tree.
"I'll just back up and let you hang out," I told my visitor.
Mowing isn't my favorite job. But it does have its perks during Monarch migration.
