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The Monarchs are coming soon
Published October 13, 2007
The annual migration of Monarch butterflies through Texas is on the verge of reaching Del Rio.
Monarchs are large, boldly-marked orange and black butterflies whose annual migration between their breeding grounds in the U.S. and their winter roosts in the mountains west of Mexico City is one of the great phenomena of the natural world.
“Monarchs touch people deeply for a variety of reasons,” said Mike Quinn, invertebrate biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Quinn said the Monarchs’ annual mass migration is one of those reasons.
He also said people love Monarchs because they are “large, showy, unique and easily observed.”
And Del Rioans usually have a front-row seat for the annual migration because Val Verde County is located in the heart of the Monarchs’ flyway as they head south.
Quinn said the average annual peak of the Monarch migration through Del Rio occurs around Oct. 18.
Quinn said he has received emailed reports from Monarch watchers throughout Texas, indicating that the butterflies are pushing steadily south.
On Monday, a watcher from San Angelo reported “thousands of Monarchs” on her property. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Quinn received reports of Monarchs passing through Wichita Falls and Abilene by the hundreds and the thousands.
Monarchs in migration will form communal overnight roosts that can include hundreds or thousands of butterflies, a preview of the way they will spend the winter.
There, in the mountains of central Mexico, Monarchs will adorn oyamel trees on protected slopes by the millions and the tens of millions.
Scientists don’t know exactly how the Monarchs winging their way south find their way to the winter roosts in Mexico.
Even more extraordinary is the fact that “the butterflies returning to Mexico. . .are the great-great-grandchildren of the butterflies that left the previous spring,” according to the University of Kansas’ MonarchWatch program.
“The next winds out of the north will bring them streaming through (Del Rio),” Quinn said Friday. “They are right on your doorstep.”
Monarchs are members of a butterfly family called the Danaids, so named because they feed on members of the milkweed family of plants, Quinn said during a presentation at the Casa de la Cultura last year.
Quinn said that Soldiers, another member of this butterfly family, are slightly more tropical, but they also occur in Del Rio and Val Verde County, as do Queens, another type of Danaid.
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