Third Generation Monarchs

     On the afternoon of August 7, 2015, I was driving through Lancaster County, Pennsylvania cropland on a few errands.  As I slowly drove by about a half dozen hay fields in a mile stretch of a country road, I watched those hay fields intently for wildlife.  Most of the fields were in flower, either with purple, fragrant alfalfa blooms, the lovely, pink blossoms of red clover, or both flowers together in the same field. 
     Cabbage white butterflies, yellow sulphur butterflies, silver-spotted skipper butterflies and bumble bees were among those flowers in abundance to sip nectar.  Barn swallows and tree swallows cruised swiftly low over the hay fields to snap up flying insects.  Then, suddenly, I saw a striking orange and black monarch butterfly on a red clover bloom, then another fluttering from blossom to blossom, and another until I had seen six monarchs in those flowering hay fields.  I'm sure there were many more. That was a good number, considering I hadn't seen any monarchs all summer, mainly because they are down in numbers because of herbicides which kills milkweeds, their larval food, and pesticides that kills insects themselves.   
     The most interesting part of seeing those monarchs today is that they won't make the trip to certain forests on mountains in Mexico to spend the winter.  But they are the parents of the fourth generation of monarchs, the generation each year that does make the trip. 
     The first generation of each year, which is the fourth one of the year before, leaves Mexico in March and migrates north into the United States.  There is a second generation and a third each summer as each generation of monarchs continues to push north and east.  But only the fourth generation of butterflies makes the trip to Mexico, starting about the middle of September.
     Females of the third generation of monarchs, as all their species does, mate and lay eggs on milkweed leaves.  The caterpillars hatch, eat milkweed foliage, grow, pupate and emerge as adult monarchs in September, ready to go to Mexico to escape the northern winter.
     I was excited to see those beautiful monarchs today.  Hopefully, they still have a bright future.  But we need to quit poisoning the land and its plants and animals.