19 July 2015

Our grandparents saw things we will never see

"Everywhere men and women reported monarchs flying by the millions in September in gigantic, undulating waves extending for miles; like the passenger pigeon migrations of the age, these swarms sometimes obscured the sun, blurring day into night."
From William Leach's Butterfly People: An American Encounter with the Beauty of the World, citing "A Swarm of Butterflies" in the September 1868 issue of American EntomologistPhoto Credit.

15 comments:

  1. 1868... our great great grandparents.

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    1. The phenomenon did persist well into the 20th century.

      :.)

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  2. About 20 years ago i was walking on a path near my (then) home and I looked up and the trees were full of Monarchs. I did not have my camera with me but the image is still with me. Thanks for the memory.

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    1. My wife has had that experience twice, once as a child in Kentucky, and once with me years ago here in Madison. That last time we saw a couple branches of one tree covered with monarchs; I would pay good money to see a cloud of them obscure the sun...

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    2. I was blessed to see this once about 3.5 years ago. We were attending the graveside service for a very sweet and dearly loved woman who passed away. The trees in the graveyard were completely filled with Monarchs, and hundreds of thousands were in the air.

      Beautiful.

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    3. I saw a cloud of them while driving through Texas many years ago. Pretty amazing, but sad as they were flying across the highway and not high enough to avoid cars. Very sad. At the next gas stop we had lots of them all over the front of our vehicle. Nothing you could really do about it.

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  3. As we will see things that our grandparents never saw in the form of technological advances.

    Nowadays I consider myself lucky when I can show my son a box turtle or nest of baby birds in our yard. When I was a kid we saw them all the time.

    I would trade every piece of electronics that I own to live in a time when natural phenomena like this were more common.

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    Replies
    1. Move to the jungle or the taiga.

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    2. I agree with you. Trading the iPhone for the living planet (as it often occurs to me we have) is a blunder of magnificent proportions. Anger and grief, both reasonable responses.

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  4. In Santa Cruz, when I was a boy, there was a yearly gathering of Monarchs. I saw it once. I was too young to appreciate it then, but I remember it well. Too bad I didn't know it wouldn't be around long.

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  5. Is this post supposed to be on the blog today? The heading is 03 September 2015. Whatever the date, the photo of the monarchs is beautiful.

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    1. It's odd how that worked out. I had originally posted the item back in 2013, ran across it today and decided to repost it this coming September when the Monarchs migrate south. But it showed up today with the September date. I guess that happened because I had previously posted it. I'll try posting something else and see if it keeps bumping to the top like a "stickie" or whether it then gets buried with the out-of-place date.

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    2. Of course, this is so our grandchildren can already see it!

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    3. After I posted a few more items, this post stayed at the top of the queue. So now I've learned how to make a "stickie" that stays at the top - that might come in useful in the future.

      Date revised to July 19 to let it now be buried by new postings.

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  6. Looks like it did... weird. But pretty!

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