Monarch Grove

The kids were off school Monday for Martin Luther King day, so I took them down to see the Monarch butterfly grove in Pismo Beach. It's something I've wanted to do ever since we moved here, and it was really cool.

It was right off of Highway 1, south of Pismo Beach. The grove of eucalyptus trees was smaller than I thought it would be, but it was full of thousands of butterflies. They get about 25,000 Monarchs there from October to February, the largest group in the U.S.

There were sweet little old docents walking around answering questions. They also had a trailer next to the grove with more information about the butterflies. This is a milkweed plant on display; it is the only kind of plant the Monarchs will lay their eggs on because it's the only kind of plant a baby Monarch caterpillar will eat. So if you want to see Monarchs in your yard, plant milkweed seeds and the females will find it. As you can see, there are little white eggs under all the leaves already.

But milkweed doesn't grow within a mile of the coast, so the butterflies will all be gone by March 1st. Then it will be 5 generations before they return to Pismo next fall. It's amazing they find their way back to that little grove of trees every year. They've been going there for 80 years, and the docent said it's an ideal grove for them because the eucalyptus trees are tall and have foliage all the way down to the ground. Plus the trees grow in three rings for extra protection from wind and predators.

The males (dark orange) go on top of the females (light orange), then carry them up to the top of the trees to continue mating for 8-24 hours. This was going on all around us. My boys refer to this as "getting married."


Sometimes the females got stuck in the leaves and the males couldn't lift them; so someone would carefully move the leaves and twigs out of the way to free her. We were all rooting for them. It's a good thing the butterflies aren't shy.

We forgot our binoculars in the car, but they had these handy telescopes for us to use.




We were there from 3-4 p.m, and they were just starting to make their way to the trees to bed down for the night. Every once in a while they would all decide to leave their tree and swarm around over our heads. What a sight!

Have you read Knuffle Bunny? Well this is Levi going "boneless."

There was a little path winding around the trees and protected areas to keep people away from the mating butterflies. But we still had to watch our step just in case.

Afterwards we continued on the path down to the beach. There were dunes, streams (luckily no one got too wet because we weren't prepared for swimming) and lots of awesome climbing trees.

Looking at these pictures makes me realize how shaggy all my boys are. Time for haircuts.

Oh my goodness, what a beautiful day at the beach. It was 80 degrees there! No wonder the Monarchs choose the central coast to survive the winter.