Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sharna Johnson In search of ponies
When the breeze picks up this time of year on the High Plains or those golden-red evenings surround us, we’d do well to wonder if it just might be the result of the thousands of paper-thin, brightly colored wings beating above our heads.
You’ve probably noticed them here and there, flitting from flower to flower or floating across the open skies, and while there may be occasional natives to the area, the increased number of monarchs in autumn is tied to a larger occasion.
link Sharna Johnson
In search of ponies
Positioned along the edge of their route, we experience the annual monarch migration that moves through the U.S., and for the last few weeks the orange and black butterflies have been trickling through our area as they head south.
Beginning in early September, the migration we experience launches from the northeastern portion of the U.S., with monarchs leaving Canada, New England and similar cool regions as they try to get on the road before winter hits.
Headed to Mexico where they can winter in comfort, many of these butterflies will have traveled more than 3,000 miles by the time they reach their destination, sometimes moving at a pace of more than 100 miles each day.
Icons of nature and freedom, if one gets close enough to truly appreciate their beauty and majesty, it may be surprising to see a small round sticker on the underside of a wing.
Even more astonishing may be the realization that these stickers contain phone numbers or email addresses.
Distinct and one of the most commonly recognized butterflies, it can be easy to take the monarch for granted because we see them every year and come to accept them as part of the natural world.
This year with high rain levels in many regions of the country, monarchs have flourished, but that hasn’t always been the case and what we may not notice from one fall to the next is that their numbers have dwindled overall, according to scientists.
As a result, huge efforts are taking place across borders to track their progress and to gain understanding of the things that may be hindering their success.
And a phone number or email address on a sticker, attached to a powdery orange wing, is a request for information to aid in that process.
But it is only one of many ways information is being gathered.
Yet another area of research where science has embraced public input, tracking the monarch migration has become a massive citizen science project. By employing the eyes of average citizens across the nation, conservationists and researchers are hopeful they can gather better data on patterns and changes in monarch populations.
Citizens are encouraged to tag butterflies with tracking stickers and report any responses they get (think message in a bottle). They are also being asked to report their own observations as monarchs move through their regions.
A free online program to engage students and citizen scientists, Journey North (www.lerner.org/jnorth) is a website which provides real-time maps of migration data from Canada to Mexico — Tuesday, about 100 butterflies were observed roosting in Morton, Texas, and Thursday, 500 were documented in trees on a woman’s property about 100 miles south of Clovis — an app for easy reporting, classroom tools and volumes of information and past data, all aimed at educating and documenting.
It turns out chasing butterflies is actually science in action, so if the flutter of brilliant orange wings passing through your field of vision feels like an important event, rest assured you’re not alone, and there are plenty of people who want to hear all about it.
Sharna Johnson is a writer who is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at:
