The butterflies are coming!
In their annual migration north, clouds of the famed “painted ladies” are putting on quite a show this week in Southern California, from Monrovia to Santa Anita to West Hollywood and LAX. Social media is erupting with joy, compounded by the fact that this beautiful bounty comes in an era of crisis in California for butterflies of all make and model.
The number of butterflies in the Golden State has been in decline for decades, according to some researchers reaching historic lows in 2018. A monarch butterfly count led by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in November “found only 28,429 of the iconic orange-and-black insects wintering along the California coast,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. “That figure represents an 85% drop from the previous year and a 99.4% plunge compared with 40 years ago.”
Which makes this season’s explosion of painted ladies, those iconic orange-and-black winged beauties, all the more surprising.
And now, after days of wowing their fans throughout Southern California, the painted ladies are expected to head north toward Sacramento, flitting at 25 miles-per-hour along the Central Valley, roughly along the route of Interstate 5, and eventually moving into Oregon. Some members of the species, which migrates from the Mojave Desert each spring and head north, could end up in the Bay Area, though experts expect most of the crowd to follow a mostly inland flight path.
In what’s being described as the largest migration of painted ladies in more than 10 years, the gang could arrive in Northern California any day. But be warned: They are a fast-moving bunch, so don’t blink or you’ll miss them.
They are also a short-lived species, with a life span of two to four weeks.
So REALLY don’t blink!
“In 2005, we had a similar outbreak,” Arthur Shapiro, a professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, told SFGate. “They arrived here on March 11. I thought it would have been great fun if they arrived here on March 11 again, but they didn’t. They should in theory get here this week.”
While we await the painted ladies’ arrival in Northern California, here’s a look at what our fellow residents further south have been seeing:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu_zy-1HVfP/?hl=en
