Monarch butterfly

All posts tagged Monarch butterfly

Autumn Butterfly ~

Posted by Maverick ~ on September 22, 2018
Posted in: Flowers, Music, Nature, Photography, Poetry. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

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Autumn Butterfly
Pablo Neruda

The butterfly dances
and burns – with the sun – sometimes,

flits and flies flaring in a swirl,
now still,
on a leaf that rocks it.

They said, “You have nothing.
Not this sickness. You persist.”

I said nothing either.
And it is past the hour of the harvest.

Today a hand of anguish
filled the autumn sky.
And into my soul the fall leaves pushed.

They said, “You have nothing.
Not this sickness. You persist.”

It was the hour of the scythe.
The sun, now,
convalesced.

Everything leaves this life, my friends.
It leaves or perishes.

It leaves the hand that beckons.
It leaves or perishes.

It leaves the rose you loosen.
And the mouth that gives you a kiss.

Water, shadow and vase.
It leaves or perishes.

It is past the hour of the scythe.
The sun, now, convalesced.

Its warm tongue enveloped me.
And then I said: “-You persist.”

The butterfly dances,
shudders,
disappears.

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ƸӜƷ

Endangered Species

Posted by Maverick ~ on February 16, 2018
Posted in: Flowers, Music, Nature, Photography, Poetry. Tagged: , , , , , .

Endangered Species
Dan Beachy-Quick

Even this
brief thought is endless. A
man speaks as if unaware of the
erotic life of the ampersand. In the
isolate field he comes to count one by
one the rare butterflies as they
die. He says witness is to say what
you mean as if you mean it. So many
of them are the color of the leaves
they feed on, he calls sympathy a fact, a
word by which he means to make a claim
about grace. I have in my

life said many things I did not
exactly mean. Walk
graceless through the field. Graceless so
the insects leap up into the blank
page where the margins fill
with numbers that speak diminishment.
Absence as it nears also offers astonishment.
Absence riddles even this
briefest thought, here
is your introduction to desire, time’s
underneath where the roots root down
into nothing like loose threads
hanging from the weaving’s underside.
No one seeing the roots
can guess

at the field above. Green
equation that ends in yellow
occasions. Theory is
insubstantial. The eye latches on
to the butterflies as they fly
and the quick heart follows, not
a root in nothing but a thread across
abstraction. They fly away.
What in us follows we do not name.
What the butterflies pull out us
as in battle horses pull
chariot, we do not

name. But there is none, no battle,
no surge, no retreat, a field
full not of danger, but the endangered,
where dust-wings pull from us
what we thought we lost, what theory
denies, where in us ideas go to die,
and thought with the quaking grass quakes.
Some call it breath but I’m still breathing.
So empty I know I’m not any emptier.
On slim threads they pull it out me,
disperse—no
one takes notes—disappear, &

🔸

September ~

Posted by Maverick ~ on September 25, 2017
Posted in: Flowers, Music, Nature, Photography, Poetry. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 

September
 Hartley Coleridge

The dark green Summer, with its massive hues,
  Fades into Autumn's tincture manifold.
  A gorgeous garniture of fire and gold
  The high slope of the ferny hill indues.
  The mists of morn in slumbering layers diffuse
  O'er glimmering rock, smooth lake, and spiked array
  Of hedge-row thorns, a unity of grey.
  All things appear their tangible form to lose
  In ghostly vastness. But anon the gloom
  Melts, as the Sun puts off his muddy veil;
  And now the birds their twittering songs resume,
  All Summer silent in the leafy dale.
  In Spring they piped of love on every tree,
  But now they sing the song of memory.

Complex intelligence ~

Posted by Maverick ~ on August 30, 2017
Posted in: Flowers, Music, Nature, Photography. Tagged: , , , . 

There is a difference between our wisdom and nature's simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

Monarch Numbers Up Slightly, but…

Posted by Maverick ~ on March 6, 2015
Posted in: Nature, Photography. Tagged: , , .

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Butterfly Still at Risk of Extinction
Favorable Weather Boosts Population But Pesticides Still Threaten Butterfly’s Chance of Survival

The annual overwintering count of monarch butterflies released today shows a modest population rebound from last year’s lowest-ever count of 34 million butterflies, but is still the second lowest population count since surveys began in 1993. The population was expected to be up this winter due to favorable spring and summer weather conditions in the monarch’s U.S. and Canadian breeding areas, as butterfly populations fluctuate widely with changing weather. But the 56.5 million monarchs currently gathered in Mexico for the winter still represents a population decline of 82 percent from the 20-year average — and a decline of 95 percent from the population highs in the mid-1990s. This year’s population was expected to be much larger due to nearly perfect climate conditions during the breeding season.

“The population increase is welcome news, but the monarch must reach a much larger population size to be able to bounce back from ups and downs, so this much-loved butterfly still needs Endangered Species Act protection to ensure that it’s around for future generations,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Found throughout the United States during summer months, most monarchs from east of the Rockies winter in the mountains of central Mexico, where they form tight clusters on trees. Scientists from World Wildlife Fund Mexico estimate the population size by counting the number of hectares of trees covered by monarchs. Monarchs need a very large population size to be resilient to threats from severe weather events, pesticides, climate change, disease and predation. A single winter storm in 2002 killed an estimated 500 million monarchs, more than eight times the size of the current population even with this year’s boost.  ƸӜƷ

Full press release — The Xerces Society