Letter from Ana Moreno: Love Is in the air
Published: 02/23/2022
It has been a very different season from what I can remember in the last 6 years, because the cold days have been more constant, in fact in February there have been some cloudy and cold days. This reminds me of when I was little, normally around February 5th, it used to snow in Cerro Pelón. Fortunately this season we haven’t had snow.
After all, as the previous report said, better days will come. Well finally the days have cleared up and we have seen a greater activity of the butterflies. We can also say that February 13th was the day that marked the end of the cold and the beginning of the warm days. As expected, February 14th “Valentine’s Day” is the time when we started to see more mating activity. From this moment on, more than 100 daily matings have been counted.
During this week the colony also separated and is now divided into three different spots. One at the same starting point 50 meters from “El Capulin” in this colony there are around 40 trees covered with butterflies. In a different spot called la peña there are around 40 more trees, and in the third spot, about 200 meters below, the first colony has about 8 trees with butterflies.
It is difficult to count at this moment the exact amount of trees that there are in the three different spots, because the colony is split and the butterflies are scattered. We have also seen a slight decrease in the colony. On February 16th one of the arborists, Oswaldo Esquivel, started to see some butterflies going back north, which is normal for this time of the season. We have since located them about 20 minutes away between Cerro Pelon and nearby city Zitacuaro.
—Ana Moreno, guide, JM Butterfly B&B
