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 The male Monarch Butterfly may easily be distinguished from the female by noting the two highly visible black spots on the insect’s hind wings and the thinner black webbing within the wings. The female’s webbing is thicker and she has no identifying wing spot as the male does.
Mating Behavior
Mating of monarchs occurs mostly in mid-afternoon. The male patrols over an area where milkweed grows. When he spots a female, he flies after her and dives at her, directing her flight down to the vegetation. He may even hold onto her body with his legs and then glide down with her. Once she is landed, he may again fly over her, and then alight alongside and join his abdomen to hers in copulation.
Following this, the two may fly up to 75 feet high and over 300 yards away, the male carrying the female suspended from his abdomen. This flight usually ends high up in trees, where the two remain joined for as long as an hour.
Stage of Milkweed Butterflies – Monarchs
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The Story of the Monarch
Millions of Monarch butterflies spend the winter months surviving in mountainous Mexican pine forests. As the earth tilts on its axis, the days begin to lengthen and spring weather creeps north at about 80 – 90 kms each day, the Monarchs leave their wintering roost and head north in search of their essential plants, Butterfly or Milkweed, all forms of Asclepias. The female begins her journey with a precious load of about 400 eggs and she seeks out Asclepias plants on which to lay them. She does not deposit an egg on just any plant or the first that she encounters but carefully visits a number of plants tasting them with her delicate feet. She is not being overly fussy but rather is counting them. When she is satisfied that there are enough such plants in the area then she beings to lay her eggs, confident that there will be ample food for her babies when they hatch into Monarch caterpillars. This will be her last and crowning achievement as she is now becoming (for a butterfly) very old.
She would have been born in Southern Ontario or in some northern state or Canadian Province in August of the previous year and then made the incredible journey of 3000 miles south to Mexico to a place she has never seen, guided by instinct alone and will be 8 or 9 months old when she dies. Her offspring born in Texas or another southern state continue the journey north, mating and laying eggs in a relay of generations until they reach Canada. It will probably be the grandchild that makes the return trip to Mexico in the fall.
HOW LONG DOES A BUTTERFLY LIVE?
Particularly dainty species might manage a few days only in the wild while robust swallowtails could be vital for a month or two. The migratory generation of the Monarch must be among our longest-lived butterflies. Flying south in August or September, northward again in April and May, winter Monarchs may see ten months between chrysalis and the day they die. A norm for most butterflies is about two weeks. The Mourning Cloak, which can over winter as an adult and may even fly in mild winter weather, can live up to ten months.
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