Monarch butterflies typically live a short two- to five-week lifespan — unless, that is, they’re flying to Mexico or California; then the 2,000-mile journey fuels their tiny bodies to sail the blue skies up to nine months longer.
The North American monarch butterflies that float and flutter through Abilene in late September and early October are coming from the northeast and headed to Mexico for their overwintering period.
Monarch butterflies circle a chaste tree by the Margaret and Herman Brown Library (Photo by Callie Leverett).
The monarchs follow the same cross-continental migration route every year — but it is also the first and only trek the little bugs will take. The butterflies migrate to somewhere they’ve never been before, yet they know exactly how to get there.
This was, and still kind of is, a mystery to humankind.
It has been known that monarchs move south for the winter since the 1930s. Where exactly they went, though, wasn’t discovered until the late 1970s.
Dr. Fred Urquhart and volunteers from all over the continent tagged thousands of butterflies and tracked them to southern Mexico. Then, Kenneth Brugger found the dwelling place of the monarch butterflies in the forests of the Sierra Madre Mountains, according to Natural Habitat Adventures.
From northern states and southern Canada, the monarch ventures through Abilene, then southwest to the Sierra Madre Mountains in central Mexico. But how do thousands of bugs know how to get to a place they’ve never been?
A monarch butterfly sits on the flower of a crape myrtle. (Photo by Callie Leverett)
According to Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, “Scientists believe they use the sun’s position and Earth’s magnetic field to navigate directionally, but the rest is still a mystery being investigated.”
These tiny butterflies navigate the skies with the help of the bright sun and Earth’s magnetic field. It is like they have their own compass.
Given that the heavy Texas heat has lingered into October, it’s likely the intricate orange and black wings of the monarchs will fill Abilene’s trees a little longer than usual.
But as the weather slowly gives in, cold fronts will whisper to the swarm of butterflies wandering south, and the cycle of migration will begin again. Abilene will bear witness as a brand-new generation of monarchs soar across the West Texas skies once again.
