The Monarchs Make Their Annual Visit : Migration: By the end of the month, hundreds of thousands of the butterflies will have settled in eucalyptus groves in the county.

Fluttering in from as far as the Rocky Mountains, monarch butterflies have begun congregating in Ventura County in their annual search for shelter from winter winds.

Hundreds of thousands of the butterflies will have settled at their favorite eucalyptus groves around the county by the end of the month--traditionally the peak of the annual migration.

Monarchs are believed to be one of the few migrating butterflies, experts say. Most scientists believe that those originating west of the Rocky Mountains travel to California during the winter, while the rest head for Mexico.

Johnji Stone, coordinator of educational programs for the city of Ventura, said about 25,000 monarchs come together each year in a eucalyptus grove at Camino Real Park in Ventura.

The vanguard of this year’s migrating group has already begun to assemble at the grove site, Stone said. Stone, who runs the monarch program in the park, said the city will start educational tours in November, after most of the insects have arrived.

“They usually cluster together, maybe thousands on one branch,” Stone said. “They have their wings folded, which are a dull brown underneath, and they look like a bunch of dead leaves.

“But then they’ll just all fly around and that’s all you can see, masses of orange and black.” The largest monarch gathering site in the county, with more than 60,000 at a time, is the Taylor avocado ranch just west of Ventura, said Paul Cherubini, a Northern California entomologist who has studied the monarchs’ migration pattern for 15 years.

“They aggregate at the eucalyptus trees surrounding the avocado grove, because the trees offer them a nice ring of protection from the wind, yet they allow in plenty of sunlight and they provide nectar,” Cherubini said.

Other popular county sites, Cherubini said, are a back yard in the 1500 block of Vista Del Mar Street in Ventura, and the rows of eucalyptus trees that serve as wind barriers for farms throughout Oxnard, especially along Rice Avenue and Wooley Road. Despite their numbers, the monarchs are not a threat to the area’s agriculture because they feed on nectar and the caterpillars’ only source of food is the milkweed plant, said Phil Phillips of the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Ventura.

Although experts agree on what the monarchs eat, they agree on little else. Depending on which expert is consulted, monarchs can live from a few months to two years. Entomologists who believe the shorter life span to be correct say each butterfly only makes one leg of the migration, leaving the return trip for its offspring.

Scientists who favor the longer-life theory believe the same butterfly makes the round-trip excursion, departing from Ventura County in the spring for the return trip home.

And then there are some scientists who don’t believe that the butterflies migrate at all. Adrian Wenner of UC Santa Barbara considers himself a renegade. “Most of the monarchs that you’re going to see in Ventura didn’t come from Idaho or Montana or any of those places,” he said. “Most are from Ventura.”

“They are great wanderers, and some tagged individuals have been found more than 2,000 miles away from their original site. So sure, some of the ones from Montana will end up in California. But some will end up in Colorado as well.”

Brian Harris, an entomologist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, is one of the many experts who disagree with Wenner’s theory.

“I think it’s noble that he has decided to go against the grain, but every reputable scientist I know of out in the field highly disagrees with him,” Harris said. “All the tagging and research we have done for years points to the idea that monarch butterflies do migrate.”

Monarchs have been a hobby for Somis resident Ruth McCarty since 1957. A former elementary school librarian, McCarty brought a cocoon from her back yard to school so the students could watch the monarch pupa develop into a butterfly.

Her interest grew and the hobby expanded to filming the emergence of a butterfly and showing the film in classrooms.

Word spread, and teachers from around the county asked her to come in and share her expertise. Last year she visited 19 elementary school classes, she said, adding that she hopes to visit as many this year.

“As they learn about the butterfly, children become fascinated,” she said. “And if you can get them aware and interested in the monarch then they will take an interest in their surroundings in general and hopefully care for the world.”