Monarch, wings spread
Danaus plexippus
Monarch · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 19 August 2026
A Monarch perched over a spray of spent ironweed and thistle in the August border at the Botanic Garden, wings held fully open to the last of the day's sun. Monarchs breed across the whole continent on milkweed, and late August in Brooklyn is the beginning of the migration.
The open wings are a habit about warming the flight muscles rather than posing. A Monarch on the wing now is the generation that will fly to the mountains of Mexico, a place it has never been, and live eight months to do it where its parents lived five weeks.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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