The royalty of the butterfly world, the monarch. This particular butterfly was imaged along the California coast in September and was probably migrating to its winter home.
Monarchs have an incredible life cycle. They leave their wintering grounds in Mexico or in southern California in the spring and over several generations they migrate throughout the US and into southern Canada. Each generation pushing a bit farther north. Then in the fall the last generation migrates all the way back to the wintering grounds, a place they've never been and was last seen by their great great great great great grandparents.
They can be seen in large numbers in the fall in Cape May, NJ as they pass through heading south. Imagine, these fragile creates, some starting out as far north Maine, traveling down the east coast as they fly on to Mexico, congregating in the millions in a remote fifty acres in the Transverse Neovolcanic Mountains in Mexico.
The butterfly in the image wasn't heading to those mountains, as only butterflies living east of the rockies wind up there. Southern California or Baja Mexico was the more likely destination.
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