Thank you for the article on monarch butterfly conservation in your Sept. 26 edition [“Keeping the Kingdom: Locals Work to Protect Monarch Butterflies”]. My daughter enjoyed participating in the ecoEXPLORE program a few years ago.
I wanted to point out, though, that the insect on the cover of your print edition is a viceroy butterfly, the well-known mimic of the monarch. Although not related, the two look nearly identical; the most obvious distinction is the dark horizontal line (the “postmedian band”) on the viceroy’s hindwings. The monarch does not have the band. The image heading the article on page 31 shows a true monarch, and there are good comparative images at [avl.mx/5cp].
Readers interested in monarchs and participating in citizen science programs should be aware that viceroys and monarchs occur in much of the same range, including Western North Carolina.
— Steve Schoof
Weaverville
Last fall I enjoyed standing on a hill near Weaverville and watching hundreds of monarch butterflies fly south. The wind was out of the west at 5 or 10 knots so they were crabbed into the wind with their noses pointed west but tracking due south for warmer climes and Mexico. It was a sight to see. And yes, I always left plenty of milkweed in the fields for colorful monarch caterpillars to feed on, spin their cocoons, and enter metamorphosis.