The Longest Flutter

A new flight distance record for a monarch butterfly has been reported by scientists tracing their annual migrations. A monarch, tagged Nov. 7 in Ellwood, adjacent to Goleta in Santa Barbara County, was found April 9 in southeast Arizona, 660 miles from where it had spent the winter.

Over the last three years, almost 60,000 monarchs have been tagged by Chris Nagano of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Walter Sakai of Santa Monica College. Reports from those sighting the tagged butterflies are enabling them to trace more accurately the extraordinary movements of the insects.

The previous distance record was reported in 1957 when a monarch, tagged in the San Francisco area, was found near the Grand Canyon after a journey of 565 miles.

The monarchs that wintered on the Pacific Coast soon will lay their eggs and die. Three more generations will be created in the ensuing months until the great-great-grandchildren of those that spent the winter on the coast themselves return to those coastal areas, unerringly navigating a route that they have never followed before to roost as autumn turns to winter where the cycle of life began the previous spring.