A monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) feeds on a butterfly bush on Maryland's Eastern Shore near Cambridge in preparation for its autumn migration to Mexico, October 2011. In 2013, the population of monarch butterflies on the 2,800-mile annual migration was marked as the lowest it has ever been, since scientists began counting in 1993. This decrease is thought to be due to climate changes and deforestation; high temperatures kill monarch eggs, and lack of habitat means there are fewer locations available to adults that reach the wintering grounds of central Mexico. Use of herbicides in the United States contributes to the elimination of the monarch's main food supply, milkweed plants. (CNS photo/Thomas Lorsung)
These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.
These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, –
A blue and gold mistake.
Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,
Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!
Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,
Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!
- Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830-1886), “Indian Summer.”
