Sunday afternoon I watched a bald eagle and a red-shouldered hawk in the distance, with my binoculars, as they rode the rising currents of a thermal. Their wings were motionless, and the warm lifting air currents under their wings were took them higher and higher in a circular path.

After a while, I put my binoculars down and caught sight of something else, not sure if it was a small bird or a butterfly, but much closer and lower to the ground. With the aid of my binoculars I could see that it was a Monarch butterfly that was also beginning to soar and allow the wind to carry it aloft.

As it was rising, it never flapped its wings once, and was content to just be lifted higher and higher. It ascended in a tight spiral in comparison to the rising trajectory of the eagle and hawk, and I hardly had to move the binoculars horizontally very much.

But, what really surprised me was that as long as I watched it, it never once flapped its wings. It just soared, and after awhile, went completely out of sight. This was much different than the ascending flight which we often see when we release a tagged monarch and it flaps and soars and flaps and soars as it gains altitude. I guess it was just a good day for hitching a ride on a warm air current and possibly getting some mileage out of it.