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Western Monarch Day
"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
If you are lucky enough for a Monarch butterfly to land on you, later this spring and summer, you are lucky indeed!
These still chilly days are the Monarch butterfly's slumbering season. And as one of the most recognizable and flashiest of large butterflies, the aptly named Monarch, with its tartan-like bold orange, black, and white striping colours, is beautifully honored in this tribute tartan.
Each year, tens of millions of monarch butterflies migrate up to 3,000 miles southward from cold northeastern United States and Canada down to warmer climes in Mexico's Highlands.
They have several favourite rest stops on the way. In California, some Monarchs cut their journey short and overwinter in the Eucalyptus and pine trees in Butterfly Grove, Pismo Beach and Pacific Grove amongst others. The monarchs, return every year and can be viewed sleeping in the thousands, clustered together in their favourite trees.
After overwintering and as the weather warms, these same butterflies wake and begin their spring migration in February and March, heading inland and northward to breed. Their migration follows a multi-generational cycle, similar to the eastern monarchs. Flitter, flutter, butterflies! 🧡 🖤 💛 🤍 🧡 🦋 🦋 🦋
By designer Carol A.L. Martin, this tartan reflects the brilliant colors of the Western Monarch butterfly.
The Western Monarch (Danaus plexippus) may be the most familiar North American butterfly, with its easily recognizable black, orange, and white wing pattern.
The North American monarch population is notable for its annual southward late-summer/autumn migration from the United States and southern Canada to Mexico. During the fall migration, monarchs cover thousands of miles, with a corresponding multi-generational return north.
Monarchs have even been transported to the International Space Station and bred there.
In both caterpillar and butterfly form, monarchs are aposematic - warding off predators with a bright display of contrasting colors to warn potential predators of their undesirable taste and poisonous characteristics.
Monarchs are foul-tasting and poisonous due to the presence of compounds from milkweed ingested during their caterpillar phase.
Monarchs share the defense of noxious taste with the similar-appearing viceroy butterfly in what is perhaps one of the most well-known examples of mimicry. Though long purported to be an example of Batesian mimicry, the viceroy is actually reportedly more unpalatable than the monarch, making this a case of Müllerian mimicry.
Flight of the Butterflies is a 2012 Canadian documentary film covering Dr. Fred Urquhart's nearly 40-year-long scientific investigation into the monarch butterfly, tracking the details of what is considered one of the longest known insect migrations, the flight of the monarch butterfly from Central Mexico to the United States and Canada and back.
To see a stunning trailer for this beautiful film, click the Monarch!