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BookMasters
December 2013
On Sale: December 12, 2013
116 pages
ISBN: 0989220206
EAN: 9780989220201
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Pet-Lover | Non-Fiction Photography
In The Amazing Monarch, author and photographer Windle
Turley chronicles the life cycle of the monarch butterfly.
Replete with page after page of full-color photographs, the
book shows the monarch’s rarely captured destination
wintering grounds. The contrast of the orange and black pops
off the page as the reader goes on a visual tour in the high
mountains of Mexico. The multifaceted work also contains
poems and quotations focusing on the beauty of these tiny
animals that weigh only.02 of an ounce.With carefully
researched text and consultation with leading entomologists,
The Amazing Monarch tracks the monarch’s migration and
interesting life spans. Amazingly, this migration only takes
place every three to five generations, but somehow, by the
last week of October, they arrive at the same small groups
of oyamel fir trees their ancestors populated the year
before. The handful of roosting sites, located at about
10,000 feet altitude, each may contain 20 to 30 million
monarchs in a single site only a few acres in size.After
their stay in Mexico, it is crucial to head north to get
back to Texas and Louisiana and specific types of milkweeds
to lay their eggs during a critical three-week period. If
the monarchs reach their destination too early, frost on the
milkweed could kill the eggs. A late arrival may mean the
milkweed is no longer succulent.Returning from Mexico, the
fourth or fifth generations will now have lived nine months,
and before dying, will lay eggs during the last two weeks of
March. A female will lay 400 to 500 eggs during her
lifetime, and primarily on only one type of milkweed plant,
but only a small percentage of eggs will actually survive to
become adult butterflies. The offspring of the first
generation travel on to Kansas and Tennessee during April
where the female will again lay her eggs and die, after
having lived only 45 to 60 days. The process continues to
South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin in May and the Great Lakes
and Canada region in June. But the fourth or fifth
generation will not breed, lay eggs, or die; instead, they
head south in the late summer.Granted almost unprecedented
access by Mexican wildlife officials, Turley photographed
the insects in their natural habitats at their sanctuaries
in Los Saucos near Valle de Bravo, State of Mexico and at
the Sierra Chincua Sanctuary near Mineral de Anganguo, State
of Michoacan—areas unknown to outsiders until 1975.
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