What
Do Migrating Monarchs Look Like?
Sample Observations of Soaring Flight
A
Plane Changes Course to Avoid Monarchs in Texas
While leading a field trip, Charlie Parides witnessed an amazing spectacle
in Starr County, Texas. From the ground, ten to twenty thousand monarchs
were seen soaring in a huge "kettle configuration," similar
to the flight of hawks in a thermal. He described it as a "migrating
body of Monarchs."
"It was monarchs as far as you could see," said Parides. "The lowest flying Monarchs observed were at around 500 feet high and the kettle, or group, consisted of monarchs dispersed vertically up to 2,000 feet. I am a private pilot and judged the altitude from a small aircraft flying nearby at an altitude of about 2,000 feet. As we watched, the pilot maneuvered his aircraft in order to avoid the mass of butterflies. Most of the folks on the field trip I was leading had also never seen anything like this before. It was a unique treat. I was at the same exact location the next day and there wasn’t a single monarch in the sky."
An
Eagle a Hawk and a Monarch Rise in a Thermal
One Sunday in Maryland, a bald eagle and a red-shouldered hawk were riding
the rising air currents of a thermal while Rudy Benavides watched. In
the same thermal, a monarch butterfly caught his eye. He watched it rise
silently and effortlessly, higher and higher, until out of sight. Here
are his notes:
Sunday afternoon I watched a bald eagle and a red-shouldered hawk in the distance, with my binoculars, as they rode the rising currents of a thermal. Their wings were motionless, and the warm lifting air currents under their wings were took them higher and higher in a circular path.
After a while, I put my binoculars down and caught sight of something else, not sure if it was a small bird or a butterfly, but much closer and lower to the ground. With the aid of my binoculars I could see that it was a Monarch butterfly that was also beginning to soar and allow the wind to carry it aloft.
As it was rising, it never flapped its wings once, and was content to just be lifted higher and higher. It ascended in a tight spiral in comparison to the rising trajectory of the eagle and hawk, and I hardly had to move the binoculars horizontally very much. But, what really surprised me was that as long as I watched it, it never once flapped its wings. It just soared, and after awhile, went completely out of sight. This was much different than the ascending flight which we often see when we release a tagged monarch and it flaps and soars and flaps and soars as it gains altitude. I guess it was just a good day for hitching a ride on a warm air current and possibly getting some mileage out of it.
