butterflies

Conservationists say a concerted national effort to plant milkweed is needed to reverse a precipitous decline in the iconic monarch butterfly.

From the age of five, Fred Urquhart was fascinated by monarch butterflies in his Toronto neighbourhood. Born in 1911, he spent hours watching the orange and black insects flutter about, wondering: Where did they go in winter? At school, he read voraciously about nature, especially monarchs and other insects.

The Chinese idiom zhuāng zhōu mèng dié literally means “Zhuang Zhou dreams a butterfly.”

Monarch butterflies are being found as far North as central Alberta this summer in what biologists are calling the species’ biggest movement north in recorded history.

The brown argus butterfly, Aricia agestis, has benefited from the UK’s warming climate over the last 20 years or so.