Between
November and February hundreds of thousands of monarch butterflies
migrate from
Canada to California because they cannot tolerate extremely low
temperature in
Canada. Some of them travel as far as 2,000 miles to reach their
destinations
at the speed of 200 miles per day. Contrary to popular belief, most of
them do
not go to Mexico. Rather, they stay in these overwintering grounds.
They
cluster together in order to protect themselves from predators. Monarch
butterflies are inactive when it is cold. And therefore the best time
to
photograph them is between noon and 2:00 PM when the sunlight is
strong. There
are many monarch butterfly overwintering sites in California. These
pictures
were taken in Pismo Beach and Goleta Grove.
When
it is cloudy a cluster of monarch butterflies just looks like a bunch
of dried
leaves. After spending more than an hour in Goleta Grove I still could
not
capture any spectacular images. As I was walking back to the car, suddenly
the
sunlight burst through the sky! I immediately ran back to the site and
kept
shooting before the sunlight disappeared again.
