With winter fast approaching, it's not only Utah’s snowbirds that are migrating south.
Monarch butterflies across the nation have already begun their annual journey to warmer climates. Unlike East Coast monarchs, Utah’s population of the orange and black butterflies travel to southern California for the winter months, according to Shawn Clark, insect collections manager at BYU’s Life Sciences Museum.
“There are some migrations that will be for thousands of miles. They can fly for several hundred miles at a time without stopping,” Clark said.
He said the butterflies tend to start their journey alone, but by the time they get close to their wintering grounds, there may be hundreds or thousands fluttering in what look like flocks.
More interesting, however, is that though butterflies return to the same wintering area, even the same tree year after year, the butterflies traveling to California this fall are not the same ones that left the state in the spring.
“The butterflies that in the fall return to California or go to California, those are several generations down the line from those that flew north in the spring,” Clark said. “It’s quite remarkable that they know just where to go and that they do return usually to the same tree where their great-grandparents lived the year previous.”
The monarchs will return to Utah in early spring.