Tag Archives: Migration

Monarch and milkweed

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Orange and black monarch butterfly is flying above milkweek plants with green leaves and pinks flower clusters.

Today a monarch butterfly finally found our little milkweed patch in our roadside garden bed.

Last year, three plants appeared there on their own, and in late July we saw a caterpillar. In the spring we scattered some fluffy seedpods in the soil hoping to expand the numbers. This year we have a patch of about a dozen. As they grew and then bloomed, I’d look out the front windows, hoping to see a monarch. But nothing until today. It is amazing that the monarchs can find such tiny patches of milkweed, scattered in city neighborhoods.

In the midst of all that is heavy, it feels good to support these far-traveling little migrants.

Prayer to a Migrating Bird

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Migrating geese in the sky, seen near the pitch pine.

You are a teacher for a time like this—

you who claim more than one home,

navigating each season by the compass

of yearning planted within your DNA

You know your destinations, no stranger

—I have heard it said—you return always

to the very sedges from which you depart.

You are a teacher for a people like this—

we who hesitate to claim any home,

yearning always, contrary wisdoms planted

like magnets in the dark, stretching

our souls across miles and languages

—strange cries echo in our throats—

tearing our arms apart with reaching.

You are a teacher for a journey like this—

your rhythms carry me through long stretches

in the white winter of my perennial flight

I remember there are seasons for departing

and returning, homes we locate by yearning

—planted like polar gravities in the wind—

your silent languages cry to my wandering wings.

Yes They Did Come!

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HummingbirdWe put up the hummingbird feeders five days ago, and the hummingbirds showed up within a couple days.  Today I got some photos, while sitting on the deck a few feet away. This is a male ruby-throated hummingbird, and a female came around as well.  It is rather marvelous that they can find these feeders, considering the length of their travels.

Hummingbirds migrate to and from central America where they spend the winter, usually in the same place that their ancestors did.  They fly alone, not in flocks, and instinctively know where to go.  Isn’t that incredible?  Hummingbirds have an average life span of 3-5 years, so maybe these are the same hummingbirds as those who found the feeder we put up last year, before we had the roof on the deck.  Or maybe they are descendants.  Now we have two feeders, and they’ve already used both.  Hummingbirds are very territorial, so I wonder if we’ll see others, or these two will claim it all for themselves.