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winter in tropical climes but now their secret hideaways have been discovered and are preserved in sanctuaries. Some hideaways are only a 100 metres across found sheltered among the pine forests along the crest of the Sierra Madre of Michoacan State, Mexico.

The butterflies hibernate for the winter, occasionally braving snows and zero temperatures (no doubt less severe than in Canada and the Great Lakes Region). During the warm spring weather of March they come out of hibernation as sexually mature butterflies and commence to mate. After mating the males drop dead from exhaustion and the pregnant females fly north to the USA and Canada where they lay eggs on the milkweed plant, then die themselves. Soon the eggs hatch into caterpillars, these being gaudy black and yellow stripped critters, which proceed to devour the milkweed (or swan plant). After a few weeks of gorging themselves they build a chrysalis where they transform themselves into a beautiful butterfly, emerging in late May as a new generation of monarchs!

An advantage of being a male monarch is that you have only one 4000 km journey to make! Also I sympathize with the North American monarch butterfly. I have experienced 6 years of Buffalo winters and was glad to migrate to sunny Australia. The Australian monarchs don't have to go through all this migratory rigmarole.

Only a few sanctuaries are open to tourists. We went to the Sierra Chincua sanctuary and drove to road's end in a forest clearing on the hillside where there were several dozen primitive wood plank huts. One served as a ticket office selling entrance tickets and offering horses for hire at $10 a go. Our guide advised us wisely to take a horse explaining that there was still 5 kms of rough trail to negotiate. I happily paid up.

Each horse was lead by its energetic Indian owner at fast walking pace up the steep hill and along the top of the ridge. We hung on for dear life to the protruding wooden knob on front of the saddle. Eventually we reached another forest clearing which was the end of the horse trail. So far we had not seen one butterfly and I was beginning to think this to be a "wild goose chase".

While strolling another kilometre along the ridge top we encountered many other tourist groups coming and going and started to see the odd monarch butterfly fluttering through the trees.

Our guide indicated a steep path to take off the ridge and immediately we entered a fairyland of monarch butterflies. The air was thick with orange butterflies

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