Butterflies!

Its that time of year again - when the Monarch butterflies come to the Central Coast and kick it for a couple months at their beachfront pad. They've actually been here since (I think) November and they leave around the end of February or beginning of March. Since we hadn't gone to see them yet, we thought we'd better do it now or we just might miss them. So Saturday we headed on over to Pismo and checked them out. I love butterfly season! For those of you who aren't close, you're definitely missing out and for those of you who do, you should go see them!  

They're so majestic!  These butterflies fly here all the way from Canada.  This is as far south as they'll go (there are some that go down south a little more, but not these).  Its incredible how many there are, but as populated as it seems, they've really dwindled in numbers!  We were checking out the population chart and back in '90/'91, there were like 230,ooo or something.  Last year (they didn't have this years count) there were only like 17,000.  Pretty sad, but still spectacular!  Last year we asked the park volunteer about it and he said that they think that with so much land being developed, the milkweed which the caterpillars live/feed on is being destroyed in surrounding areas, which brings the butterfly population drastically down.

Anyway, here's some bunches of butterflies.  They huddle up when its cold and fly around when it warms up.  I guess once it hits below 55° they can't fly, so they bunch up on the eucalyptus branches before it gets that cold so they don't get stuck on the ground.  Here's a few picts of the bunches.  They look like dead leaves, but they're all butterflies! (If it helps at all, all of the thick bunches of leaf-looking things are butterflies)

As always Jonah loved it!  Jonah told me, "butterflies are my favorite insect!"  Jaxon was too little to appreciated them last year, but was SO excited when he looked up in the sky to find thousands of butterflies flying overhead.  I have to say I was a bit giddy myself!  Of course on our way back to the car the boys found a pile of fallen down trees to climb on.  We got out of there as soon as we spotted stinging nettle (yikes!).  

We're definitely going to have to go back again soon. Since it was Saturday and the end of winter break, it was really crowded and not as peaceful and serene as it usually is.  But still, I love, love, loved it!