The beautiful photograph above was taken in October by Erica Rutherford in her Hiller Highlands neighborhood.
It is always a delight to see a West Coast Monarch as it heads from the mountains across the state and down the coast to winter refuges like Santa Cruz and San Diego. Photographer Erica Rutherford was lucky to come across her butterfly seen resting on a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii). Overwintering habitats are increasingly compromised and fewer individuals of this once common species were observed last year, which was concerning to nature lovers and butterfly watchers. Nevertheless, local residents in Berkeley and Oakland saw monarchs in their yards this fall, from Kenilworth Road to Hiller Drive—feeding on coyote brush and white alyssum, respectively—and posted photographs to the community website that documents wildlife in the north Oakland hills (go to nhwildlife.net for more wonderful pictures).
According to a recent article by Mary Ellen Hannibal, author of Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction, climate change likely has something to do with the disappearance of monarchs by disrupting seasonal signals that prompt the butterfly’s annual migration: “They come and go at the wrong time,” she says, and “out of sync with their larval food source,” which are blossoms of the California milkweed (Asclepias california).
The milkweed itself is declining from overuse of pesticides especially in Central Valley agricultural areas. Ms. Hannibal adds, “When numbers get low enough, there is only one direction in which a species is headed.” Fortunately some local scientists have “hatched” a program called Monarch Head Start that proposes to redress the situation. The scientists will be “collecting and housing butterflies in ideal conditions for mating, egg laying, and the first several phases of caterpillar development, replicated at multiple locations in California.”
What we as citizens can do to help the butterfly along in its journey is to plant native milkweed in our gardens. Read more about this hopeful project at BayNature.org and search for “monarch.”
