Farm Stand Marfa

Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter Oct 10
CHASING MONARCHS

The sun had not risen yet when I staggered sleepily out to Jim’s car in the early morning dark. My friends, both named Jim, were birders and well-equipped with binoculars and reference books to capture any animal or plant we might encounter during our adventure at Balmorhea Lake.

An irrigation reservoir built in 1917, the lake was only a few miles from the famed Balmorhea State Park where a series of artesian and gravity springs have long formed an oasis for indigenous peoples and animals, and which today survives as the most outstanding swimming hole in West Texas. The lake was our destination and though we were bound to see extraordinary bird life in and around the water, tracking the migrating Monarch butterfly was the purpose of the day.

I heard about the thousands of Monarchs roosting at Balmorhea Lake at a Friday night presentation on caterpillars at the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute.  Monarchs roosting this far west is a rare occurrence. The Monarch’s migratory flyway is east of us -cutting a 300 mile swath during September and October from Wichita Falls to Eagle Pass at the border to Mexico.

Saturday had been a workday for me at Farm Stand Marfa, so we scheduled Sunday to hunt for the Monarchs. With very few clues – something about a dam and tamarisks- the two Jims and I set out for Balmorhea, 58 miles to the north of Marfa.  On the far side of Fort Davis as we wound our way through the basaltic columns of Wild Rose Pass, a deep orange poured over the black horizon of mountains and plateaus.  I seemed to wake up with the sun. “Colors of the monarch,” I chimed.

It was still sweet early morning when we turned off the highway for Balmorhea Lake. The 500 acre lake is lined on two sides by a sleepy fishing community of trailers and makeshift buildings. Satellite dishes and a few new vehicles gave away the decade, but I felt as if I had returned to the Fifties.

Earth dams held the water in, reportedly stocked by Texas Parks with largemouth bass, channel catfish and sunfish.  With the exception of the bird families, there was little fishing going on. The dam on the west side was capped by a roadway. Presently, we would discover that the road circled the lake.  The east edge of the lake was an earthen dike.

We drove across the dam looking for Monarchs, but were immediately distracted by spectacular birds on the lookout for fish.  A Great Blue Heron lifted briefly out of the water.  Its wings might have spanned six feet. The Great Blue is a large wading bird known for picking its way in slow motion along shorelines on its long spindly legs.  One banded bird has been aged at 23 years old, but most are likely to live to 15.

Mallards, teals and grebes swam the lake’s peaceful pastel blue surface and dove for fish. A cormorant stretched its wings while balanced on a stick rising jaggedly from the water.  Egrets and an Ibis or two created a white rickrack line on the far northern shore.

Then we noticed the feathered lifeguard of Balmorhea Lake. The elegant lake watcher was an osprey perched high on a utility pole.  The black-backed and white-breasted raptor had a black mask wrapped around its white head.  He was keenly focused on catching his breakfast and dismissed our presence as insignificant.

We turned our attention back to the purpose of this visit and drove in the direction of a marshy plain of tamarisk trees and a shoreline of rush and cattails.  We passed a few campers not yet stirring in the picnic area.  Two gigantic turkey vultures, warming themselves in the sun, sat like sentinels on posts near the outdoor tables.

Just past the picnic area we saw our first Monarchs cavorting in the air.  We stopped and found a few of the orange gems drinking nectar from a blooming Whitebrush. Behind us several Monarchs tumbled through the air in the direction of the east side where stands of cattails and tamarisks grew.  We jumped into the car and followed them.

We navigated a narrow rutty road through a young tamarisk forest that had sprung up in a mud flat. Though beautiful to look at, the tamarisk called salt cedar is the bane of the Texas and New Mexico riparian ecosystems.  Arriving in North America in the 1800’s from Asia as an ornamental, the invasive salt cedar has spread through the watersheds of the southwest choking every waterway and flood plain and preventing native plants from growing.  If native plants can’t grow, native animals cannot feed.

On the northeast side we passed through a wild garden of sacaton grass, four and five tall, glowing in the first sun of the day.  Lark buntings love to pull the seed heads down to the ground and eat them.

Parking at the edge of the tamarisk forest, we made our way to a wide half-dried mud channel, impressed with hoof prints and raccoon paws.  Tamarisks grew thickly on the banks and Monarchs darted here and there.  We never found the thousands we had come in search of, but we spent a magical hour following each butterfly we saw.

A few tamarisks were topped with pink blooms, and some trees were a deep green. Most of the young trees were dried a golden and maple fall color.  These were the trees that the Monarchs favored.  The butterflies were so well camouflaged by the drying curry-colored foliage, we had to search the branches carefully to see them holding on by their legs.

With a four- inch wide wing- span the Monarchs were as big as small birds, but their flight pattern was pure butterfly.  They let the wind carry them for a few seconds then they dashed about in erratic flight.  Were they playing or just dizzy-headed?  They were probably confusing predators, or they could have been communicating with one another.

Officially the Danaus plexippus, the Monarch is a tropical wonder.  Its deep orange wings are veined in wide black bands and edged in black with white polka dots. For all its beauty, it is the butterfly’s migratory phenomenon that has captured our imagination and galvanized the conservation movement in its favor.

The Monarchs we were chasing around Balmorhea Lake were the great grandchildren of the butterflies that had migrated north the previous spring as they laid their eggs on the milkweed plant along their way.  This third generation of Monarch had emerged in the late summer in the northern US.  The change in the light of early fall might have signaled the time to begin migration.

Monarchs followed the sun south. The pull of the earth’s magnetic field kept them on their course to their overwintering sites on the mountaintops of the oyamel forests in Michoacan, Mexico.  They would travel more than 2,000 miles by soaring on the wind.  When the wind became rough or cold or began to blow in the wrong direction, they rested and waited out the unfavorable flying conditions.

Why were Monarch’s roosting so far west of their usual flyway?  Could fierce winds have blown them off their course?  Could drought-like conditions in their migratory pathway have sent them flying in search of nectar and water?  I can’t imagine where they got the idea that west Texas had more bloom than central Texas.  Perhaps our intermittent fall rains had produced enough Whitebrush bloom to scent the winds in our favor.

The two Jims and I could easily have spent the rest of the day searching for Monarchs.  Kingfishers and Redwinged blackbirds flying in and out of the grasses and shrubs seemed to say, “Follow us. This is the life.”  But our own gardens, expecting that Sunday-kind –of-attention called us home.

As we emerged from the mud flat forest and the shoreline growth, once again we passed the osprey fixed in the same observational perch as before. This time the raptor held a very large fish in its claws.  Now and then the dignified creature reached down and tore off a bite.

On our way home we could see wild sunflowers blooming along the roadside and in every ditch we passed. Rabbitbrush and desert broom were fall blooming nectar plants for butterflies. Goldenrod, aster, verbena, mistflower and milkweed growing isolated and in pockets of moisture fed the insects.

How could this desert bloom be enough to help the Monarchs survive. On its southward journey the Monarch must load up enough nectar to store for the months of overwintering and have some in reserve to begin the spring migration next year.

Later that night I studied the Monarch migratory map for this fall. I could see that the movement west of their usual corridor had begun as far north as Nebraska.  Following a southerly route through western Nebraska and Kansas, they landed in West Texas. Were the monarchs being pushed west by weather conditions? We know their habitat is being obliterated by the corporate farms that strip vast tracts of land, spray them with herbicides and pesticides and then plant only one crop.

Though I was troubled about the destruction of the Monarchs’ habitat and their overwintering forests, the day had been a blissful experience. The lake and its gently roughened surrounding landscape complimented the strong but delicate-looking Monarch. I was grateful to these tiny but tough survivors for teaching me about the environment they depend on for life, leading me to their nectar sources and making me think even harder about the importance of protecting their habitat, which is one we share.

(The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.)

Since there is so much more to say about the Monarch, I will report Part II in next week’s newsletter.  Until then, here is what can be done to protect the butterfly and other life forms, which share the same environment.

_Establish small farms crisscrossed with plantings or preservations of insectary corridors.
_Collect and plant native and heirloom seeds, and reject engineered seed, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
_Conserve and reclaim our waterways and water sources.
_Put a stop to roadside spraying of herbicides, which kills the nectar sources the pollinators, bees, wasps, moths and butterflies, depend on.
_Reforest the mountainous region in Michoacan to restore habitat and to provide the people of the region with income.

For information on the reforestation of the mountains in Michoacan see the La Cruz Habitat Protection Project.

http://www.lchpp.org/gpage10.html

Please consider supporting their efforts

Current migration map shows a more westerly route than usual.
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/monarch_roost_all_092409.html
Here is the Thursday Sept 24 report of Monarchs roosting at Balmoreah Lake:

Greg Lasley and i were returning from an oding trip to west Texas this morning when we stopped in at Balmorhea Lake.  It was cool, cloudy and windy, and while looking through hoards of swallows pushed down by the weather, we noticed strange” clusters” in some of the Salt Cedars below the dam.  A closer look showed them to be clumps of resting Monarchs.  We estimate that there were a minimum of 30,000 individuals in just the few trees we could see from the dam.  One small tree close to the dam had 3,500- 4,000 Monarchs, and we got some nice photos of them – see Greg’s pics
here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39994058@N07/sets/72157622428896666/
For more sightings see:
http://www.butterflydigest.com/s/digest.pl?rm=message;id=63812
VISIT
The Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute’s native plant gardens.
https://cdri.org/index.html