Butterflies migrating through county

Butterfly migration goes through county

Ohio’s monarch butterfly migration is rolling through Lorain County as butterflies in North Ridgeville’s Sandy Ridge Reservation prepare to make the long trek south.

According to the Lorain County Metro Parks, high numbers of monarchs can be easily viewed from the meadow trail.

The Metro Parks also currently fosters monarch caterpillars at the Discovery Den of the Carlisle Visitor Center at Carlisle Reservation in LaGrange, assisting them in their transition to butterflies.

Mary Ewers Joyner, avian program curator with the Lorain County Metro Parks, said in a video posted Sept. 6 that monarch caterpillars are in the caterpillar stage for between 1012 weeks and an additional 10-12 days in the chrysalis (or pupa) stage before turning into a butterfly.

“This is a really important thing for these butterflies just to give them a safe home to grow up in and then release,” Ewers Joyner said.

Butterflies raised through the program are tagged before being released into the wild.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the eastern population of adult monarch butterflies can travel between 50 to 100 miles a day, and up to 3,000 miles total before reaching their destination typically in Mexico for the winter.

Traveling only during

According to the Lorain County Metro Parks, high numbers of monarchs can be easily viewed from the meadow trail.

the day, monarch butterflies will cluster in groups at night and spend October to March primarily in the Mexican states of Mexico and Michoacan in oyamel fir forests at an elevation of 2,400 to 3,600 feet.

PHOTOS BY KEVIN MARTIN — THE MORNING JOURNAL Above and below: A monarch butterfly rests on a wildflower in the Lorain County Metro Parks’ Sandy Ridge Reservation in North Ridgeville on Sept. 6. The butterflies are in the process of migrating south for the winter.