Monarch Butterfly Migration

Posted by Jamie McIntosh Sep 23, 2009

Usually, when I’m looking for beauty in my garden, I don’t look 50 feet in the air. However, this week I’ve been watching hundreds of monarch butterflies flying just above the tree canopy in my landscape, one step in a migratory journey that may be as long as 3000 miles.

It doesn’t make sense to me that every fall thousands of these insects travel from the United States and Canada to Mexico, a place they’ve never been in their lives. As they make this trek, they stop to rest and refuel in our gardens. By November, Mexican children begin to celebrate their arrival. They’ll spend the winter in the shelter of Mexican forests, before beginning their spring migration in March.

If you have sources of nectar, such as the aptly named butterfly bush, in your garden, you’ll likely serve as a feeding station for migrating monarchs. Farms can also serve as an important nectar source for monarch butterflies: flowering alfalfa fields are a rich feeding station for butterflies, if the farmer doesn’t cut the alfalfa to make hay before the plants bloom.

Whether you tend a small flower patch or a 5000 acre field, it’s important to think about the ways chemical herbicides and pesticides can affect non-target insects, like butterflies and bees. Encourage others to use physical barrier controls that don’t affect beneficial insects, so that we may continue to enjoy the show that nature provides in the form of this mysterious migration each year.