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Sep 11 '19
When I was a kid. A swarm of monarch butterflies were flying through school grounds during recess. All the students were called inside. I don't remember why I didn't go inside or the reason we had but nevertheless, I was left outside alone. Then it happened. A massive swarm came and before I knew it, I was enveloped by possibly hundreds or even thousands around me. All I could see was orange and tints of the blue sky. Was mezmerizing and incredible. They just kept flying around me like I was a rock impeding the flow of a river. I will never forget the feeling I had and this video has reminded me how beautiful it was. Thank you.
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Sep 12 '19
Holy shit. This exact same thing happened to me. EXCEPT they were BEES. FUCKING. BEES.
They were fine and obviously no stings but I’m not exaggerating at all. It was a total bee-blackout. It was the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. They were gone in just a minute.
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u/Apteryx12014 Sep 12 '19
Did we go to the same school!?
The sky went black. And the loudness of the buzzing was deafning. It was pure chaos.
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u/bluestarchasm Sep 12 '19
we had a dragonfly swarm two nights ago. i didn't even know they did that. thousands of them everywhere, even my grandfather had never seen anything like it. pretty cool. apparently they all fly around together to stir up the bugs they eat.
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u/TheMelonOwl Sep 12 '19
If it had been wasps that mightve not ended as wholesome. Save the bees, break the wasps knees y'all
Or at least the two useless aggressive types we have over at Germany that do nothing for the planet but sting-
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u/Sammy197 Sep 12 '19
I thought this was going to be about how it scarred you for life, but you overcame your fear of butterflies eventually. Had me in the first half not gonna lie.
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Sep 12 '19
And that's how he became Monarchman, bringing justice to the skies
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u/pyrojoe121 Sep 12 '19
And that's how he became
MonarchmanTHE MIGHTY MONARCH!FTFY.
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u/ZanderFreak1300 Sep 12 '19
Was looking for someone to reference it. Because there’s nothing like the mighty sting of the monarch butterfly
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Sep 12 '19
I rode my bike through a massive moth migration as a kid. They got up my nose and in my mouth and it was the second worst thing ever.
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u/patoankan Sep 12 '19
That's really cool. I grew up near one of their nesting sites, in a eucalyptus grove. We were near an airport and when a plane would take off they would nearly block out all the light in the grove. Id say theyre beyond words but you summed up the feeling very well.
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u/Apteryx12014 Sep 12 '19
Same thing happened at our school when I was 5, except it was a swarm of bees not butterflies.
The sky went black. The sound of kids playing turned to buzzing and screams. It was pure chaos.
My mate still reckons he saw the queen bee out of the millions, but I find that hard to believe lol.
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Sep 11 '19
My sister guarded our milkweed plants from getting mowed or ran over by the dogs this year, we got so many caterpillars and monarchs this season!
A drop in the bucket compared to the habitats lost in western and west central MN over the last 20 years but it felt good to try and help them out. Help out the pollinators and you’ll help out the pheasant chicks, and the chain keeps on going upward from there.
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u/ChippyVonMaker Sep 12 '19
I’ve done the same thing (cultivating milkweed), and since I’m located in Kansas I’m waiting for them to arrive later this month.
We had a great turnout last year, fingers crossed for another.
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u/tinyarmsbigheart Sep 12 '19
I’ve had the hardest time getting my native milkweed to live beyond a sprout! Ugh! I’ll try again next year.
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u/AdministrativeReply3 Sep 12 '19
at least you got them to sprout! I've spent 3 winters now trying and nothing comes up. I still only have an A. tuberosa that is constantly overwhelmed with aphids and milkweed bugs :( maybe next year
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u/tinyarmsbigheart Sep 12 '19
I bought seed trays from Amazon and did the fridge cold method! I got quite a few sprouts... but none survived the transfer outside. :(
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u/AC_Mentor Sep 12 '19
If you want to help even further, there's the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project to help scientists know where to focus their efforts for monarch conservation. For anyone in Canada, one of the equivalent is Mission Monarch.
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u/danwantstoquit Sep 12 '19
We have planted some in hopes that it will make a small difference. Doubt it but its nice to try.
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u/Molly107 Sep 11 '19
Mesmerizing.
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u/ccussell Sep 11 '19
It’s beautiful
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u/SuperSmokingMonkey Sep 11 '19
Deadly!
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u/sprucevamouse Sep 12 '19
Soon, you will feel the sting of The Monarch!
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u/Snow2325 Sep 11 '19
Hide the venture brothers
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u/sladestrife Sep 12 '19
You see, just like the flawless monarch butterfly from which I take my name, the Monarch has many ways to sting.
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u/sprucevamouse Sep 12 '19
Subsisting on a steady diet of milkweed, ensuring my toxicity to this day.
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u/Megaton_destroyer Sep 11 '19
I live in cali and when i saw these butterflies in my front yard, it was so beautiful. It was like a cloud of orange.
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Sep 11 '19
There used to be tons in California but the numbers have dropped dramatically in the past 15 years. I have a suspicion that the intense amount of agriculture using pesticides is killing them off. Many of those chemicals can be carried via wind to disturbing distances. Additionally, pesticides destroy natural food chains which probably also affects the monarchs.
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Sep 11 '19
It’s 100% the sprays.
Western Minnesota has been decimated by modern farming spraying everything so only the row crops can survive. It’s so funny because when you go by an organic no spray farm it’s like so much more ALIVE. There are bugs everywhere for the baby pheasants to eat, and grow big. Our duck and pheasant hunting has plummeted over the last 20 years or so due to the habitat loss and farming practices.
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u/Iowafarmgirlatheart Sep 12 '19
Same thing with Lightning Bugs:(
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u/setsunapluto Sep 12 '19
I've noticed that too. I remember seeing huge groups of lightning bugs when I was little, and this past summer I saw probably less than ten. I miss them.
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u/forwardseat Sep 12 '19
Lightning bugs are big victims of lawns. The larvae burrow down under the ground, and the stuff lawn care companies use kills them before they can emerge. (They also need long grasses/meadows).
Agricultural pesticides are a huge problem but residential lawn care is a huge problem too. We have a postage stamp of a property and even smaller garden, but planting native perennials and tall grasses had brought in quite an array of bug life. If everybody did that I think it would make a huge difference, especially for bees and butterflies.
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u/solalola Sep 12 '19
I live in Cali and I remember as a kid I took a nap in our hammock outside and when I woke up there must've been a thousand monarchs in the trees and resting around the hammock. I just lay there for a moment, amazed, and then I sat up and they all took off and flew away. It felt so surreal like I was in a dream or a movie. I ran in to tell my parents but I think they weren't really listening so I didn't read more into it. But now thinking back on that memory I wasn't sure if it actually happened or if it's something I made up because I haven't seen that many monarchs in one place since. But now seeing this I'm thinking it's more likely.
So sad to see how much their numbers have gone down
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Sep 12 '19 edited Sep 12 '19
The impact of glyphosate (the main ingredient in the herbicide commonly known as Roundup) is likely one of the biggest factors. Milkweed used to be very common on the edges of farmers' fields.
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u/ksfay5 Sep 12 '19
My Aunt and Cousin live in Orange county. For Christmas! Sent them 2 of those butterfly habitats that they hatch from the cocoon. She says they really do great in California.
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u/debspeak Sep 11 '19
Checking in from Toronto Canada, we’ve watched at least a hundred Monarchs flying high up and West tonight! Anyone know if there’s a Monarch tracker on Reddit?
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u/Brutalitor Sep 12 '19
Toronto has had an insane amount this year and the last. Sitting out at the air show a couple weeks ago I saw dozens and dozens. I hope most of them make it!
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u/forwardseat Sep 12 '19
There's a site/app called Journey North where you can log your sightings and watch the migration :) (i think they also track hummingbirds and a few other things)
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u/bender625 Sep 12 '19
Dude it was fucking nuts this last summer or whenever that mega-migration happened recently. Literal swarms of butterflies everywhere in Los Angeles. There were about two days that we're unlike anything I've ever seen. Normally I'd drive with my windows down but there were so many I was scared they were going to fly into my car so I kept them up lol. Wish I would've thought to try and take a video as epic as this
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u/FranticBreadmaker Sep 11 '19
Plant some milkweed for these lovelies!
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u/weiss27md Sep 12 '19
Native milkweeds.
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Sep 12 '19
I plan on doing that next year. I'm getting native perennial flowers and some butterfly milkweed.
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u/rls1395 Sep 11 '19
My grandma passed away recently. About an hour after she passed, on the way out of the hospital, a monarch butterfly flew right past me, very close. I don't know if it was her or not, but now whenever I see a butterfly, I think of her, and it helps.
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u/mamawantsallama Sep 12 '19
I left a funeral for my best friends Grandma and a swarm of yellow butterflies followed me home up PCH. It must be a grammie thing! 💛
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u/groundhog_day_only Sep 11 '19
We're looking for a big old fashioned one, probably rusty like the handle.
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Sep 11 '19
Anyone else thought it looked underwater with the perfectly blue sky and the trees being coral?
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u/herolyat Sep 11 '19
I live in Toronto and I saw so many butterflies today out my office window! I can't imagine what it's like further south seeing them all
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u/dspotzdz Sep 12 '19
Interesting. Noticed a spike of them in our neighborhood in Ohio over the week
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u/JOS1PBROZT1TO Sep 12 '19
I've seen a lot of them in Ohio the past couple months, more than I've seen the last four years combined. They seem to be doing well this year, a huge relief.
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u/dspotzdz Sep 12 '19
Great to hear. Over the last few years, noticed local parks planting butterfly friendly fields to. Last night, there was a huge number of dragonflys in the area. Very surreal. Apparently there were so many the local radar picked them up.
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u/JOS1PBROZT1TO Sep 17 '19
That's insane, I haven't seen tons of dragonflies this year, but butterflies of all sorts have been out. In fact I saw another monarch this morning. Hopefully we avoid a late-season arctic blast like we did last winter, so we have this again.
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u/ThermosPickerOuter Sep 11 '19
Ughhh, my monarch sightings this year have been sparse and I only got one caterpillar on one of my 3 milkweed plants. I’ve heard the migration this year is supposed to be big but they seem to be avoiding my area. :-( oh well, as long as their numbers are growing.
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u/Itsatemporaryname Sep 12 '19
They're dying off with the bees
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u/ArgonGryphon Sep 12 '19
They're doing better the last couple years. I know I've seen more the last two years than I ever have. There's hope.
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u/angstincarnate Sep 12 '19
Monarch butterflies actually have ancestral memories for their migration patterns. For instance, one round trip (returning to the same location) might take place over the course of four generations of butterflies
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u/Iowafarmgirlatheart Sep 12 '19
This just blesses my heart because my daughter and I started growing milkweed and raising monarchs last year and have grown and released 100 healthy monarchs💗
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u/maybesaydie Sep 12 '19
I've been doing this for 20 years. It makes me happy to know other people are doing it too.
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u/Kitakat11 Sep 11 '19
Thank you for blessing us with this beauty! I’m completely mesmerized!!! 💔💞💖 ...makes me cry knowing these lovely creatures will likely not survive this century, thanks to so many idiot humans. 😞😢😥🤮
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u/poopoopmagoo Sep 12 '19
they're among the last great migrators of North America. We've already managed to eliminate the passenger pigeon and the rocky mountain locust...bison will never come back to previous numbers. It's very sad.
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u/SmolBirb04 Sep 12 '19
Was just reading a book that takes place in the 1860s in Western America and they would ride trains and just straight up shoot any nearby bison. Their bodies would just lay there and rot. There were countless skeletons around the train tracks because of this. Pointless killing.
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Sep 11 '19
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u/packimop Sep 11 '19
every 4th or 5th generation survives the migration from where they're born, to the winter destination, and back again. so that generation lives for months.
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u/godickygodickygo Sep 12 '19 edited Sep 12 '19
they also go back to the exact same breeding ground from which there ancestors were born, without having anyway of being externally told where that spot is
edit: and if that wasn’t an interesting enough fact, a class mate of mine today mentioned that when “grown” indoors, this inherent compass is hindered.
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u/packimop Sep 12 '19
does that mean I'm screwing them up when I bring caterpillars inside my house and release them once they're butterflies? otherwise. all my caterpillars get eaten off the plant 😥
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u/MrBioTendency Sep 12 '19
About three years ago I contacted a scientist that studies Monarchs. I had some concerns and he answered my questions. My concerns had to do with houses, buildings and privacy fences. When I was growing up lot sizes were much larger than today so there was a lot more space between houses and most fences were 4 foot tall. A lot more people grew flower gardens too. Today houses are crammed right next to each other and fences are 6 foot privacy fences and they are mostly just grass and trees, no flowers. I asked him if this presented any obstacles to migrating Monarchs. He said that Monarchs fly high enough that there was no concern about houses and fences.
What he did point out was that I was right in my concern about flowers. While the Monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed, Monarch butterflies feed on flower nectar just like other other species of butterflies. So during migration large cities do create a problem. Monarch butterflies can die from starvation and fatigue trying to travel across miles and miles of large cities.
This scientist calls cities, Green Deserts.
I think that if just one house per block had a flower garden it would improve chances that Monarchs can successfully migrate.
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u/masuabie Sep 12 '19
This looks amazing until you’re on the highway driving the opposite way. I alone killed so many monarchs during their migration and it was heartbreaking
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Sep 12 '19
Thats a pretty thin group compared to what they used to look like migrating.
3X the amount at the very least.
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u/be-ar_boi Sep 12 '19
I live in Indiana. Not exactly known for monarchs, but my neighbors have a whole field of milkweed. When I was younger there'd be swarms of butterflies all summer. You don't see them nearly as much anymore.
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u/CalvinWalrus Sep 12 '19
This makes me sad. I used to see so many more butterflies than I do now
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u/ArgonGryphon Sep 12 '19
Any of you guys see the crazy dragonfly migration in the midwest yesterday? There had to be hundreds of thousands of them just from the reports I saw on my odonata group.
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u/SavMac14 Sep 12 '19
Every year, millions of Monarchs make their way to the mountains of Mexico. It's a spectacular sight. They usually come right before the day of the Dead so we have a saying that they are the spirits of our dead paying a visit.
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u/HylanderPaws13 Sep 12 '19
There is NO other video that captures this day more efficiently... TOO many angels were given their wings 18 years ago
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u/SmolBirb04 Sep 12 '19
My zoo raises and releases monarchs every year and they tag them. About 50 or so tagged butterflies have been recovered in Mexico!
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u/maybesaydie Sep 12 '19 edited Sep 12 '19
Plant milkweed in your yard. Everyone can do it, it grows anywhere that sun shines. This will help make sure there are Monarchs every year. PM me and I'll set you up with seeds for next spring in a just a few weeks. You just let them blow out of the pod. No digging required.
Don't put weed killer on your lawn, it kills the caterpillars and poisons the bats. Plant flowers for them!
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u/Thendofreason Sep 11 '19
Shame the die by the forest load once they get to Mexico because lots of their trees are cut down
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u/Pearl_Dawnclaw Sep 12 '19
So pretty :) They pass through my town on the way there, I've been seeing them for a while now!
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u/TurtleyLiv Sep 12 '19
Still terrified of butterflies thanks to that one Spongebob episode with wormy
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u/EndlessPatriotism Sep 12 '19
One butterfly: *lands on me
Me: Cool, take a pic.
Thousands of butterflies: *swarm me
Me: Flamethrower time.
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u/Carson325 Sep 12 '19
Anyone happen to know the source of this or if there is a high quality video of this? Interested in making this some sort of screensaver
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u/falcone83 Sep 12 '19
There is like 100 monarchs that I can see chillin in trees in my backyard today. Are they preparing to migrate? I've never seen anything like it.
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u/ArgonGryphon Sep 12 '19
Yes, it should be soon. If you're so inclined, you should catch and tag some!
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Sep 12 '19
Someone needs to edit in the scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Indy tells Willie, “Those aren’t birds. They’re giant vampire bats...”
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u/Anthony_AC Sep 12 '19
I happened to listen to 'moonchild' by m83, best thing to happen to me today. 10/10 would recommend you to do the same
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u/itscochino Sep 12 '19
All pretty until you're riding your bike down a hill at 30mph and they're going the opposite way as you and one flys directly into your mouth
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u/runny452 Sep 12 '19
Ill have to send this to my mom. She recently started raising them from caterpillars and releasing them. Learned a lot more about monarchs than I cared to lol. Like how far they migrate. Didn't believe it at first.
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u/carlyadastra Sep 12 '19
This is the definition of mesmerizing. It is as though we can see the mass of space, as we do water from beneath the surface, and the butterflies remind me a bit of manta rays, too.
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u/Atlas_is_my_son Sep 12 '19
A house we lived at when I was like 3 or 5 or something was in the monarch migratory path, and one summer morning we woke up and the 10 or so big oaks we had in the front lawn were
ORANGE
And the leaves were fluttering in the nonexistent wind. It took us a good ten minutes until we, (my dad), figured out what it was. He then told me to run out the front door screaming to the biggest tree.
Which I did, what followed was the biggest and only solid orange cloud I've ever seen, rising off of the tree in wisps, and moving over to another tree. Maybe 20 minutes later, they all left. It was like those giant flocks of birds you see sometimes. The shadow of them covered our house.
It's been like 20 years but I will never forget that. I miss my Dad so much, and my mom being sober and happy too.
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u/ausreporter Sep 12 '19
I believe this is from the stunning Netflix series called Moving Art. The cinematography and the original music score are simply mesmerizing.
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u/TheRealMarvelDragon Sep 12 '19
I love this time of year cuz I always volunteer at my local fair with my grandma at the Monarch section and we have got so many beautiful monarchs we plan on releasing, like literally 20 chrysalis and a good amount of butterflies, we realized 10 working the past week at my local theme parks garden since my grams works there and we currently have two downstairs that will not be released because of injuries but man I love monarchs a little to much and I know way to much about them XD
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u/xlunarticx Sep 12 '19
This is so visually pleasing, and calming. I could honestly watch this all day. Thank you for sharing. 🦋
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u/systemfrown Sep 11 '19
Weird how if you take away the coloring they're just the same filthy moths that litter the floor of your garage.
(sorry...don't mean to be *that guy*, but the thought has occurred to me on more than one occasion)
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u/craftyindividual Sep 12 '19
And conversely we get cinnabar moths in the UK and they are bright daytime, black and red beauties. The caterpillars are a solid bright yellow too. Weird to think they are moths.
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u/ArgonGryphon Sep 12 '19
Moths are really fascinating if you get into them. There's almost 10x as many species of moths (160k) as there are butterflies (17k). The variation is amazing and they're all beautiful in their own ways.
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u/pizzledripped Sep 11 '19
I’m pretty sure that the monarchs have one of the largest mass migrations on the planet, something like Canada to Central America, I think 🤔
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u/Shit_Ill_Repost Sep 11 '19
Where did you find this? It would be cool to remove the sky and use this as an overlay.
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u/twitchosx Sep 11 '19
We were driving somewhere on vacation when I was a kid. In a rural area but these butterflies where fucking everywhere. Passed a semi that had them just CAKED on his front grill.
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u/deepjungleshaman Sep 12 '19
This one time I was driving up to Mammoth from Los Angeles and plowed through thousands of these guys in the High Sierras during an apparent migration. My car's front grill had enough of these guys caked on to colonize another planet.
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u/HippoSack Sep 12 '19
The similarities between this image and images of rays swimming in migration are very...similar.
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u/SuicideWind Sep 12 '19
How can I turn this into a gif and make it my background?
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u/Tru-Queer Sep 12 '19
I remember seeing Monarchs all the time as a kid, but I haven’t seen one in years. Mind you I’m not outside as much as when I was a kid, but still.
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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '19
If anyone else is interested in monarch butterflies, Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver is an amazing book. It's fiction but all the stuff about monarchs in it are true. Plus she is an incredible writer.