OUTDOORS / MONARCH BUTTERFLIES : Winging It : Their 1,000-mile jaunt is unique in the insect world. Look closely and you can see them flutter in local eucalyptus groves.

The snow bunnies of the insect world are here. Along the coast, in protected groves, waiting out storms raging across the Great Plains, brilliant monarch butterflies hang suspended in fluttering clusters, resting from the long, long journey.

Indeed, some of the visitors have flapped their tiny wings for up to 1,000 miles, from the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, said Walt Sakai, biologist at Santa Monica College and monarch researcher.

Their migration is unique in the insect world.

“Other butterflies survive (over winter) as pupae,” Sakai said. “Not the monarchs. They come out of the mountains and head to the coast.”

In an average year, more than 1 million monarchs make it to California and Baja. Meanwhile, the country’s eastern monarch population heads for Durango, in central Mexico, a much longer jaunt. Even monarchs won’t actually cross the Rockies.

Traveling up to 30 m.p.h., the creatures start their pilgrimage before freezing temperatures set in, the first arrivals winging into coastal locations in late October and stragglers up to a month later. Then they begin the wait for spring, hanging festooned in sheltering trees and, on warmer days, searching out a little nectar. To find them, scientists and fans return each year to their favorite sites.

Like salmon seeking out the same ponds, monarchs usually go to the same groves. Unlike salmon, however, the butterflies have never been there before. The groves are simply on the monarch map, so to speak. Sakai says about five generations of monarchs are hatched in one year, leaving the last group to preserve the species with their incredible journey.

“Very often, they come to the same trees, even the exact same branch,” the biologist said. “Sometimes if a branch falls down, they abandon the area. We don’t know what it is that guides them.”

Scientists do know that monarchs fancy eucalyptus trees--and for the same reason that California farmers do: The trees’ dense foliage, and seedlings that grow underneath, stop the wind. Almost all monarch sites are in eucalyptus groves.

One of the most accessible in Ventura is in Camino Real Park. Here, the Ventura Parks and Recreation Department leads annual butterfly walks, pointing out the clusters of monarchs resting in the trees along the Arundel Barranca and telling the insects’ life history.

Doug Stults, interpretive specialist for the department, said the barranca, from a monarch’s point of view, has everything. “It’s close to the ocean; it has plenty of vegetation, fresh water and eucalyptus,” he said.

Sakai said there are fewer monarchs this year, as well as in other locations up and down the coast. Scientists hope that it is only a natural cycle.

The monarchs will remain until the air warms up and milkweed begins to grow near the Sierra. Monarch caterpillars will eat nothing but milkweed leaves, and the adults will lay eggs on the plant before dying. As the milkweed progresses eastward, successive generations of monarchs follow in a far more leisurely fashion than was the case by their westward forebears, with perhaps the third generation reaching the foothills of the Rockies.

During their time in California, the insects are literally coasting, saving their strength for the coming mating season and start of the eastward journey.

WHERE TO FIND THEM

Family Monarch Walk: 10 a.m. Jan. 30, Camino Real Park, Dean Drive and Varsity Street, Ventura. Binoculars will be furnished. Participants must preregister and prepay at the Parks and Recreation Department, 501 Poli St., Room 226, Ventura, or charge to credit card by calling 658-4733. Adults $4, children ages 5 to 11 $2.

Other monarch sites:

* Ventura, 200 yards east of the junction of Telegraph Road and Arundel Barranca.

* Goleta: Storke Road/Glen Annie Road exit from U. S. 101 south to Hollister Avenue, right to Palo Alto Drive, left to Sea Gull Drive, left to Coronado Drive and right to the end at eucalyptus groves.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has a monarch exhibit detailing, in dioramas, the life cycle. Open until 5 p.m. weekends. Admission $3 adults, $2 teen-agers and senior citizens, $1 children under 12.