Four Wings and a Prayer

Sue Halpern

This is the story of the unraveling of a scientific puzzle. Do monarchs migrate? If so, do they make the round trip? How do they navigate? From a small start in Toronto, Fred Urquhart, an amateur naturalist, enlists the help of hundreds, then thousands, of “research associates” to tag and report on the movement of the monarchs. In a National Geographic article he hints at the location of the wintering sites, but when scientist Lincoln Brower contacts Urquhart for more information, he is rebuffed as an outsider or interloper. Brower shows the National Geographic article to biologist Bill Calvert, who figures out the wintering sites. Apparently, jealousy and petty rivalries are not unknown among lepidopterists.

On an early November morning, Sue Halpern and Bill Calvert are ten thousand feet high on the slopes of neovolcanic mountains in Mexico's Michoacán state. The sun begins to warm trees filled with recently arrived Mariposa monarca, monarch butterflies from the eastern USA to one of the Mexican wintering sites. Not a few, either, but tens of thousands of butterflies – and when startled, they take to the sky with a noise not unlike the clapping of a crowd. Twenty, thirty million butterflies, maybe more, from the eastern USA winter in this part of Mexico. Western monarchs winter elsewhere.

One of the engaging parts of this book is how much scientific knowledge was advanced by amateurs. Tagging has been done by social workers, eighth grade classes, graduate students, professors, and retirees, among others – all searching for an answer to a mystery. Much is still unknown, but this book parts the veil just a bit. Recommended for those that like a scientific mystery.