Monarch butterflies begin a long journey at Tyler Arboretum

The monarch butterflies at the Tyler Arboretum were about a week old, so it was time for them to move on.

About 60 orange-and-black monarchs, freshly emerged from their chrysalises, were tagged and released into the wild at the arboretum's Butterfly Festival on Saturday.

Over the next several weeks, the delicate insects will flutter about 2,500 miles south and then west before settling in a central Mexican mountain range with millions of others, the longest migratory journey of any North American butterfly.

The first step of that journey, however, began Saturday in Media, as dozens of families looked on while arboretum workers and volunteers set the monarchs free, one by one.

"Adios!" the crowd cheered each time, as the butterflies flapped into the sky.

"It was cool that you could see it fly away," said Jack Braham, 8, of Ridley Park, who said he aspires to be an entomologist when he grows up. (Yes, he knew the proper term for an insect expert.)

Jack, attending with his parents, Jason, 40, and Emily, 42, explored a variety of other attractions at the festival, as well: There were educational displays on the life cycle of butterflies, and craft stations where guests could make butterfly replicas or wearable butterfly-like antennae.

The arboretum's butterfly house, which contains a variety of caterpillars and butterflies, was also a desirable distraction, always with a line to get in. Families delighted in trying to spot the colorful insects inside.

But the main attraction of the day was the release of the monarchs.

"It fascinates people," said Betsey Ney, the arboretum's director of public programming. It was from her finger that the butterflies departed.

The monarchs' migration to Mexico is an annual event across the continent. According to MonarchWatch.org, a website on the species, "In all the world, no butterflies migrate like the monarchs of North America."

The migration is driven by climate: monarchs cannot survive cold winters, the website says, so those that live east of the Rocky Mountains fly south, settling in central Mexico by the millions. Those west of the Rockies generally settle in California grove trees.

The monarchs that make it to Mexico do not return, the website says, but their offspring trek north. And after several generations, according to Ney, the great-grandchildren (or great-great grandchildren) of some monarchs released on Saturday will make it back to Pennsylvania. Some may even go as far north as Canada, she said.

Whatever the butterflies' journey, many festival attendees were simply happy to know that monarch butterflies come back.

Teri Wagner, 59, attending with her daughter M.J. Wagner, 33, said they both enjoyed admiring butterflies each summer.

"There's something spiritual about them," Teri Wagner said. "They're beautiful to see."