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Every year Monarch Butterflies play out a relay race, passing on genes to their progeny. Each generation moves further north through the states of the USA. Then in the ‘fall’ they move back south to well-known gatherings amid trees in secluded Mexican valleys where they overwinter.
It is less well known that similar gatherings occur in southern and central California. One such place we visited in March was the appropriately named Monarch Grove Sanctuary.
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As we walked among the Eucalyptus it took us a little while to realise what we were looking at; so still they were. That is until the mist parted and the warm sunshine produced a stirring in the clouds of Monarchs. Like a child’s drawing that had been blessed with the power to come alive, ripples of colour moved through the branches in waves of excitement.
Soon they would be gone… flying north.
We were in time to see one of nature’s most wonderful spectacles.
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Letter From Norfolk 