Viceroy butterfly

The past few years have not been kind to the Monarch Butterfly, that exquisite orange-and-black miracle that somehow is able to migrate from our area all the way to a small stretch of real estate in the Mexican highlands. A combination of lousy weather, illegal logging, and, perhaps, genetically modified crops have pushed its numbers in the wintering groups to record lows. The decline is immediately obvious in our area, too, since the number of migrants arriving here has been minuscule, at best. So when I spotted what looked like an early-arriving Monarch in the Henne refuge, I got excited—perhaps this was going to be their year. The problem is that this isn't a Monarch. It's a Viceroy, a close mimic whose similar colors have evolved to take advantage of a particular Monarch trick. That butterfly caterpillar dines on Milkweed and becomes toxic, even as an adult, to birds, who learn to steer clear of all orange-and-black lepidopterans. Viceroys, it turns out, are perfectly edible, but once burned, a bird becomes twice shy. With any luck, the air will soon be thick with toxic Monarchs, who will continue making the Viceroy's mimicry a viable strategy.