Winged Wonders: Solving The Monarch Migration Mystery by Meeg Pincus

Winged Wonders is the story of how the mystery of monarch butterfly migration was solved through grassroots cooperation in North America.

 For centuries, people all through North America from southern Ontario in Canada, through the United States and into Mexico, have wondered about monarch butterflies. In southern Ontario people wondered, where do the butterflies go in the winter?

This picture book asks: "So who solved this age-old mystery? Who tracked these winged wonders from one end of the continent to the other? Who found their secret roosting place, a marvel of nature?"

Winged Wonders asks if it was "Fred, the Canadian scientist" and his research-partner wife Norah who spent time tagging monarch butterflies? Was it citizen scientists like science teachers, gardeners who caught, tagged and released the butterflies? Was it Ken and Catalina who travelled through Mexico for two years, tracking them? "Was it the villagers and farmers of central Mexico" who directed the couple to their oyamel tree groves? The answer of course is, YES!  All of these people, working together helped to solve the mystery of the monarch migration. 

Now that we know more about the monarch migration, the new question scientists are asking is "How will they survive?" in a world where chemical sprays, farming and pollution are having a serious impact. Like the discovery of their migration path, the solution to their survival depends on all of us working together.

Discussion

Winged Wonders: Solving the Monarch Migration Mystery is an engaging and informative look into how the mystery of monarch butterflies was solved. 

With a simple text, and the lovely, colourful illustrations by artist Yaz Imamura, the remarkable story of how monarch butterflies migrate from southern Canada and various areas of the United States to Mexico is told.

The driving force behind the discovery was a Canadian scientist, who had developed a fascination for insects and monarch butterflies as a child. Born in Toronto, Ontario Canada in 1911, Frederick Albert Urquhart went on to study biology in 1931 at the University of Toronto. He graduated, top of his class in 1935 and continued his graduate studies after being awarded the B. Arthur Bensley Fellowship. Urquhart graduated with a Ph.D in 1940. 

During this time the migration of monarch butterflies was not understood. They left in the late summer and returned the following spring. But where did they go? From where did they return? Urquhart's interest in this mystery did not wane over the years. Instead he was determined to find out.

His research into monarch migration began in 1937 and was to last almost thirty-eight years. Urquhart's investigations began by raising monarch butterflies in the home he shared with his wife Nora. They had married in 1945 and she become his partner in this research. At this time Urquhart was working both at the Royal Ontario Museum and at the University of Toronto. When both Fred and Nora were appointed faculty at University of Toronto in 1961, they were able to ramp up their research.

The Urquharts experimented with various tagging methods, most of which were not successful. Eventually they followed a friend's advice to use the sticky price tags for glassware. These tags, called "alar" meaning wing, were placed on the monarch butterfly wings and labelled, "Send to Zoology University Toronto Canada". After Nora Urquhart wrote a magazine article about the tagging and asking for volunteers, people began to sign up. 

The tagging program soon allowed the researchers to learn more about monarchs: they could fly up to one hundred thirty kilometers in a day, they never flew at night, and that not all monarchs migrate. The tagging showed that the overall migration pattern was one from northeast to southwest, across the North American continent. 

The final piece of the puzzle was put together in Mexico with the help of Ken and Catalina Brugger who spoke with local farmers and loggers and located a wintering site in a mountainous region of Mexico.

While Pincus's picture book doesn't go into such detail, it does cover all the basic facts and serves as a great resource for a unit study on monarch butterflies, the scientific method, international cooperation in research, animal migrations, and insects.

One last thing: in the Author's Note at the back, Pincus quite correctly writes that many personal contributions went into uncovering the route of the monarch migration. But she also writes, "It's also important to note that history depends on who tells the story - Mexican poet and environmentalist Homero Aridjis asks: 'Did the white scientists really 'discover' the wintering sites that people in Southern Mexico knew about for centuries?' What do you think?"  Well many Mexicans were not aware of the wintering sites and it took an American and his MEXICAN wife to sort out the information they were given by Mexican farmers. And one might also ask "Did Mexican's know where the monarch's went in the summer? Did they know the migration routes? Did they know about the super-generation monarchs?" Not likely since no one had yet pieced together the mystery of the monarch butterflies.  Just because it was a "white" male scientist (along with his scientist partner and wife, along with many people across North America, including many Mexicans, all of whom worked together to piece together the information and to map out the migration routes, and to connect them to the "wintering sites" ) does not devalue his work. Urquhart was a simply scientist attempting to solve a mystery about the natural world he lived in. Perhaps instead of viewing history through the polarizing lens of current thought, we might just all celebrate this discovery - as told in this picture book -  and learn from it, that when we work together, regardless of race or country we can achieve great things.

Read University of Toronto Magazine's article, Where Do You Go, My Lovelies? about Fred and Norah Urquhart's quest to understand the monarch butterfly.

Book Details:

Winged Wonders: Solving the Monarch Migration Mystery by Meeg Pincus
Ann Arbor, Michigan: Sleeping Bear Press    2020