the monarchs are coming home

 A here-comes-spring thank you to the ladies of the Farragut Garden Club for inviting me to speak at their March meeting. I have been talking about various natural history topics with this group for the past 18 years. Yes, that is no typo. 

This time we discussed monarch butterflies, the long-distance migrant lepidopterans that have started their journey back north from the mountain ranges in southern Mexico. I wrote about their incredible life, the importance of milkweed in their lives and their remarkable journey in my most recent University of Tennessee Press book Ephemeral by Nature. 

I even tagged a few migrating monarchs with identifying numbers last October. If you see YXM 153, that is one of mine. 

Thank you, Sandra Fuller for working out the arrangements and hosting the gathering.

To watch the monarchs progress north, go to: Journey North.

YXM 153

Sara Cate releasing a tagged female monarch 
in Adair Park last October. 

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