Why the bright orange wings of Monarch butterflies are the MS Gulf Coast’s fall colors

Autumn flies across the Gulf states. Literally.

Flying, flapping, wondrous wings take flight in our subdued arrival of the third season Americans call fall.

Marvelous Mother Nature sends these colorful wings to make up for the lack of brilliant leaves experienced by others when deciduous trees do their quick-change act captured on the canvases and pages of Kandinsky, Monet, Keats, Van Gogh, Thoreau and so many others. Waxing poetic about autumn is a natural.

The difference in this coastal region of mostly evergreens, Live oaks and tepid temps is that our fall colors take wing rather than fall to the ground to beckon the rake. Oranges and yellows, sparkling greens and rubies create a gossamer kaleidoscope.

These autumn tinges are displayed by hummingbirds, monarch and giant yellow sulfur butterflies, dragonflies, pelicans and other shorebirds, lovebugs, ladybugs, to name a few. Many of them like the flutter-bys and hummers are short-term migrators; others are residents, seasonal emergers or warm winter seekers.

Who cares their raison d’etre? They are our harbingers of a subtly seasoned Gulf Coast, be it Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida or other neighbor. Spring may be the season of renewal elsewhere, but here fall brings a grand revival of spirit and mind after a sizzling summer fraught with storm threats and, particularly this year, the vagaries of a health pandemic.

Ah, welcomed autumn! In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “October is its sunset sky.” Another noted poet of our childhood learning, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, described it as “a beaker full of richest dyes.”

In my own simplistic words, October is eye candy that sweetens the soul. The air is fresher, the scent richer, the breeze cooler, the humidity less. No wonder the squirrels and deer are friskier, the birds sing louder and the pop-eye mullet jump for joy in the bays and Mississippi Sound that glint like water diamonds from the changing earth’s axis.

“If a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour,” writes the American social media sensation and avowed wordsmith Victoria Erickson.

Before delving further into the coastal autumn, we should dissect the very word. Dictionaries tell us that “fall” in the 21st century is mostly an American word. The rest of the world rests their seasonal laurels on “autumn.”

Here, though, the words “autumn” and “fall” are used interchangeably with little confusion.

What might cause confusion is the beginning and ending dates. Did you know that the calendar days and lengths of a season vary according to whether you follow the astronomical or meteorological definitions of a season?

The astronomical definition sets the dates by the equinoxes and solstices that mark the beginnings and ends of each season. It helps to know that an equinox is the point in a year when daytime and nighttime are the same length, about 12 hours each. A solstice is when Earth is tilted as far away or as close to the sun as it will be all year, thus creating both the longest and shortest days of the year.

By that reckoning, the 2021 autumn season is Sept. 22 through Dec. 21, or 70 days.

But by the meteorological definition, autumn would be Sept. 1 through Nov. 30, or 91 days. That’s because by this definition the seasons begin on the first days of the months that include equinoxes and solstices.

Simply put, meteorological seasons are mostly based on what’s happening with Earth’s weather, especially temperatures. Astronomical seasons are based on the sun and what’s happening in space in relation to Earth.

Much of the Western world marks their seasons by the astronomical definition, although some countries and cultures use other systems to mark their seasons. Confused?

Truth is, when you experience an officially changed season in a region with slow and subtle weather differences, dates don’t account for much. Sept. 1 on the Mississippi Coast, for example, can be among the most stifling. Just think of what it was like after Hurricane Katrina when fall entered no one’s consciousness.

If you travel overseas, you also might find our common designation of “fall” in an identity crisis.

In explanation, it helps to know that “autumn” came first to the English language in the 1300s when the word was adapted from the Latin “autumnus.” But much was also written about “the fall of the leaves,” a phrase that became another designation for the harvest season. In the 1600s that phrase was simply shortened to “fall.”

Next, British colonists brought both words to America and for reasons linguists can’t explain, the Brits lessened the use of “fall” in their own European countries while independent America ran fast and furious with the word. In 1816 a New Englander named John Pickering wrote a book on words peculiar to the USA, declaring “autumn is universally called the fall.”

So be it. Fall by any name is the magic season, filled with color, new scenery in old places and a proverbial cleaning out of Mother Nature’s closet in preparation for the next season. “We can feel it, and see it and taste it in the air,” declared a 1920 columnist for this newspaper with the pen name Crab of Big Level.

Early editions of this and other newspapers document a region’s seasonal peculiarities to prove things haven’t changed as much as we might suspect, what with climate change and mass human development drastically changing the natural environment.

One example is the migratory flights of September’s yellow sulphur and October’s monarch butterflies, with dragonflies added in more recent times as we unravel their ancient autumnal treks.

For the butterflies, they are fewer than when both species alighted on Gulf Coast trees en masse, taking flight when startled, cementing the idea they are truly our version of autumn leaves.

This proof comes from the Sept. 17, 1892, Biloxi Herald: “The yearly visit of the little yellow butter-flys is now occurring. About this season every year they fly along the railroad track by hundreds...”

And this, from Sun Herald editor Bob McHugh in October 44 years ago:

“The vanguard of hundreds of millions of tourists [will] be showing up soon for their annual visit to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. These aren’t the kind of tourists who will buy Biloxi t-shirts, occupy motel rooms or swing at golf balls.

“We’re talking instead about the Monarch Butterfly, probably the most remarkable migratory insect in creation....We here on the Coast are privileged to provide a way station for the Monarchs.”

The Gulf Coast may not experience rapidly dropping temperatures, mountains of falling leaves, thickening animal fur or a real need to pull out wool sweaters. But we happily fly into autumn anyway.

Kat Bergeron, a veteran reporter and feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923