The indescribable beauty of monarch butterflies filling the sky (video)

[Judi Lynn]

The indescribable beauty of monarch butterflies filling the sky (video)

Melissa Breyer

Melissa Breyer (@MelissaBreyer)
Science / Animals
June 10, 2016



This stunning short film takes us to Mexico during monarch migration where millions of butterflies take to the trees and sky.

By this point most of us know that every year, the monarchs migrate. Millions of them head to Mexico to wait out the cold weather, astonishing us wing-less humans who require airplanes to travel the thousands of miles that monarchs master so non-chalantly.

But have you ever seen what exactly millions of monarchs in Mexico looks like? I've seen photos, they're lovely. But this short film, Wings of Life, offers a glimpse into this phenomenon that is nothing short of magic. Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg employs high-speed, super up-close techniques to showcase in spectacular detail these wonderful little workhorses who are as pretty as they are vital. They fill the sky like paper in a tickertape parade; clouds of confetti, orange and fluttering. They sleep on the branches of oyamel trees, sometimes in numbers so dense that they break the branches. And to see them all together, as shown in the film, is a thing of unforgettable beauty!

(Oh, and it's narrated by Meryl Streep, that never hurts.)

http://www.treehugger.com/animals/indescribable-beauty-monarch-butterflies-filling-sky-video.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+treehuggersite+%28Treehugger%29

(Video at link.)

[PJMcK]

1. That is a beautiful video!

Thank you a thousand times, Judi Lynn. Watching that brought me out of a funk.

Tens of millions of butterflies! Incredible.

[vlakitti]

2. Great video! Thanks.

[AlbertCat]

3. Back in the 90s....

..... I walked down to the marsh where the Cape Fear River empties into the Atlantic. There are hiking trails in the woods and the marsh there near the state run Aquarium. This was off-season and nobody was there. I was alone on the trail.

There are some cyprus trees struggling out on the marsh and this one sunny day they all looked dead. They were orange-y brown from a distance.

But as I approached I could see they were covered with hundreds of monarch butterflies! As I passed trees near the trail, the butterflies would swarm all around me.

It was amazing.

Of course I had no camera.... and no one was with me....

and it has never happened again.... but when I moved to a beach front house in 2006, one year we had thousands of large brown dragonflies swarm on 2 evenings at sunset. They were everywhere and all flying in one direction: South. It was like some apocalyptic movie or something. Just a constant cloud of dragonflies heading south.

That too has never happened again....