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A search for Monarch butterflies’ roost led to the charm of hummingbirds
Fall migration musings and a pink sky finale
I looked up at the sky and saw orange-red all around! The wings fluttered, the pace slow enough to gaze and admire but fast enough to capture. The black veins and dots were barely visible.
And like a child, I stood still, with my neck in pain yet heart oozing with ecstasy.
I just wanted to see Monarch roosts, the clusters of butterflies all resting together on a tree, before they embark on the long and arduous 2700 miles journey to the South.
In her book Flight Behaviour, Barbara Kingsolver described the Monarch migration with these lines:
‘This butterfly forest was a great, quiet, breathing beast. Monarchs covered the trunks like orange fish scales. Sometimes the wings all moved slowly in unison’
And this is all I was yearning to see yesterday.
We started early to Point Pelee national park, which becomes a temporary home to thousands of Monarchs every September. This is the best place to witness the migration. And we were determined to learn everything about it.
From the moment we set foot in the park, I was lost among the changing colors of the forest. The fall is here…
