This male monarch hatched in our yard today. I was actually chrysallis-sitting for a friend when it happened, so I got to see the sacred event while my friend was at work. It didn't look like a male until a couple hours later when the dark spots began to show better on the back wings. He is still sitting on our cherry tree tonight in the dark, waiting and gathering resources for his long migratory flight to mountain forests in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. Only one of three to four annual North American monarch generations takes the trip, covering thousands of miles to the overwintering grounds. The ones that survive the trip and the winter supposedly fly back to the southern United States and begin another generation in the late spring, spreading further up the continent all the way to Canada, following the warmer air as it heads north. Amazing creatures.

Photo by A. Graf