We were sucked from our house by a hot burn of sun and heard the park before we saw it, ringing with high-pitched happiness. Claud made a bee line for the swings and we sat under the old oak, lulled by the warmth and the final drifting leaf falls; red, yellow, brown; then puzzled by the orange leaves that just carried and carried, with the gravity resisting gait of butterflies...
In an ordinary park, in an ordinary town, extraordinary things abound. A cluster of overwintering monarchs butterflies close to invisible in their diapausal pose brought vigorously, high-viz alive by a day of sunshine, like us. Legions of them glided between trees shadow-casting and eye-catching; the park population not engaged in swing warfare were made giddy and gape-mouthed by the sight of it.
It was easy to pick the over-wintering fir tree, now a tourist spot with moochy teenagers, the saturday morning park-dad mafia and iphones with human attachments all flitting around it's skirt hem pointing upwards. I stood neck-craning and exclaiming alongside a nana-with-child, who'd nipped home to consult her encyclopedia and was now holding forth on monarchdom, eyes upwards. Meanwhile, child-with-nana picked up the longest stick in the vicinity, stood on her tippy-toes and swang a couple of just-short-of-the-mark sweeps at the cluster before, in a surprising burst of speed stick and girl were yanked away and nana slunk off under the rolling eyes of the appalled crowd.
Their spot was taken by a lepidopterist no less, who took what I presumed was a rare bask in the sunny enthusiasm of the crowd himself. Free and easy with his knowledge, his amazed awe was reserved for his Japanese home-stay neighbour who had kept silkworms in his youth but flinched, revolted each time butterfly or shadow flapped near him.
Then in barged a yellow admiral, furious, tailing and chasing the monarchs despite their size and number, in a territorial war he was destined to lose. Monarchs choose the same tree year on year to over-winter in; the mechanism by which the longitude and latitude of these trees is communicated from short-lived monarch to short lived monarch just one of the many wonder-inducing mysteries of these bright creatures.
We called Claud over to take a look at what we couldn't stop looking at, orange and good, refreshing our eyes after grey wet winter weeks. Her face was all mutiny as she gave up her swing and stomped over. She looked up, picked up the second biggest stick in the vicinity: and standing up on her tippy-toes reached up to thwack...
Monarch Butterflies (Danaus Plexippus). Children (Rattus-Bagusses).
*This over-wintering spot is in Victoria Park, Rangiora. Here are some other known places where Monarch butterflies over-winter in New Zealand
