Last of the monarchs

When a brilliant day dawned on October 31, ending a spell of chilly rains, I celebrated by hanging two loads of wash outside. And that’s how, while fastening clothespins at noontime, I discovered a small, leaf-like shadow which turned out to be a monarch butterfly.

He was drifting along the perimeter of the garden (it was a male), but pretty soon doubled back and made a beeline for the blossoms of a butterfly bush, the last nectar source in the garden.

In the Upper Delaware region, autumn monarchs en route to the south appear infrequently—a solitary butterfly gliding across a road, a handful stopping at a garden or a latecomer, with small chance of reaching its goal, arriving as the flowers die back.

They contribute to the whole, but nowhere do we witness trees full of roosting butterflies or moments in October when the sky is filled with them.

But visiting near the Mexican border in mid October, Dean Mitchell had the good fortune to witness and write about the migration’s peak. “On the porch of our cabin with our morning coffee… we noticed the entire desert was covered with an undulating blanket of sparkling monarchs flowing ever south.”

And while hiking later, “I looked quickly up to find the air full of hundreds of monarchs, as though someone had shattered stained glass and thrown it dancing into the sky.”

It was far too late for my visitor to join this colorful exodus, but as he arose from the garden near dusk and wheeled to the south last week, he bore, with a dignity no less striking, the hopes of his kind.