▲ In a hidden valley in Taitung, a natural wonder of "ten thousand butterflies taking off and covering the sky" was staged, which is Taiwan's Purple Butterfly Valley.
Purple Butterfly Valley, the world's rarest butterfly wintering ground
Most butterflies on Earth spend their long winters in the form of eggs or pupae, but several butterflies migrate like migratory birds. At present, the only large-scale wintering butterfly valleys found by humans are the black-veined golden-spotted butterfly valley in the Americas and the purple butterfly valley in Taiwan.
Butterflies also migrate
In most parts of the world except the tropics, insects face the life-and-death problem of how to survive the winter - because insects basically have no cold fluff, nor do they have cold subcutaneous fat, except for a few adult insects, such as ladybugs that gather in crevices to hibernate, female wasps burrow into tree crevices to survive the winter, other insects mostly spend the winter in the form of eggs or pupas, and most butterflies spend the winter in this way. But among the thousands of butterflies in the world, several butterflies migrate like migratory birds, the most famous of which is Canada's black-veined golden-spotted butterfly (Danaus plexippus), which flies thousands of kilometers to the warm south to spend the winter, forming a magnificent wintering butterfly valley in the forests of michoacan in central Mexico, which is a wonder of nature and attracts tens of thousands of international ecological travelers to pilgrimage every year.
▲Black-veined golden-spotted butterfly. Graph source network
In the 1970s, Taiwan also accidentally discovered migratory butterflies and valleys where they gathered to overwinter, and the academic community named it "Purple Butterfly Valley", which is the second time that humans have discovered the phenomenon of large-scale migration of spotted butterflies to gather and overwinter. "Purple Butterfly Valley" is not a place name to be precise, but is used by butterfly researchers to refer specifically to the ecological phenomenon of the cluster of purple-spotted butterflies in Taiwan, which is the collective name of this kind of wintering butterfly valley. When it was first discovered, the phenomenon was observed in Maolin Township in Kaohsiung, Laiyi Township in Pingtung County, and certain valleys in Taitung County in southern Taiwan, totaling about 40 valleys, and only about 20 remain, all of which are distributed in low-altitude areas on both sides of the southern section of the Central Mountain Range.
Although the number of butterfly clusters in the Purple Butterfly Valley is far less than that of the Black-veined Golden Spotted Butterfly Valley, the multi-species cluster overwintering phenomenon in the Purple Butterfly Valley is a feature that the black-veined Golden Spotted Butterfly Valley, which winters by a single butterfly species, does not have. The butterfly species in the Purple Butterfly Valley are mainly round-winged purple-spotted butterflies, Si's purple-spotted butterflies, small purple-spotted butterflies and terminal purple-spotted butterflies, and a small number of small-veined blue-spotted butterflies are mixed. The Purple Butterfly Valley in Taitung is more special, and the Butterfly Valley here is mixed with a lot of green spotted butterflies, and even the butterfly valley dominated by small striped green spotted butterflies.
▲End purple spotted butterfly (upper left), round-winged purple-spotted butterfly (upper right), small purple-spotted butterfly (lower left), S-style purple-spotted butterfly (lower right)
Passing by may be missed
The temperature in Taipei is around 10 °C, and in Taitung it is about 14 °C. Not a few days in a year, taitung temperatures drop so low. So I immediately flew to Taitung and prepared to visit the Purple Butterfly Valley with the famous butterfly ecologist Li Yuanhe.
We came to the confluence of two streams at the foot of Mt. Dawu, got off the bus and waded through the stream, looking for a trail into the dense secondary forest. Ten minutes later, I caught a glimpse of a figure moving in the woods in front of me, and when I got closer, I realized that they were butterfly researchers and volunteers, setting up nets for butterfly marking recapture research, most of whom were acquaintances, three of whom were members of the Wilderness Conservation Society, which I founded.
At 9:30 in the morning, the sun had risen, but the forest was still dark and cold, there was no trace of wind, and everything seemed to be sleeping, and there was no movement at all, which made people feel surprised: the butterfly valley, which gathered more than 100,000 butterflies for the winter, could not see a single butterfly shadow.
A volunteer guided us down the slope under the woods for 10 minutes, when he suddenly stopped, looked up at the treetops and said, "Here are all green butterflies." ”
▲ Wintering purple-spotted butterflies quietly perch on the branches of large trees, their wings overlapping, converging into a dazzling purple illusion, like dead leaves.
I carefully observed, but only saw the dense "leaves" and did not see the butterflies, stared for a long time before I found that there are several "leaves" that seem to be slightly fanning, and then look closely, and found that the fan of the "leaves" appeared blue, I finally understood: most of the "leaves" on this tree are actually stationary small striped green butterfly! This is how they spend the winter in the forest, and the best thing is that they mostly perch on the branches of the tree, especially the dead branches after the leaves have fallen, completely replacing the original leaves, and even if unsuspecting people walk by, they will not find that there are actually thousands of butterflies on the tree.
Volunteers told me that this year's purple-spotted butterfly cluster here is also in good condition, with a preliminary estimate of nearly 200,000. As he introduced us, he led us to the left side of the trail for more than 30 meters, and I saw that the trees in front of us were full of purple butterflies like dead leaves, and dozens of trees were full, and the number was quite amazing. But compared to the first time I entered the Mountains of Laiyi township in Pingtung County in 1986 to explore the Purple Butterfly Valley, this number is again a small witch, and the butterfly merchant Shi Tianding who led me at that time was close to a million butterflies in that valley.
▲ The largest butterfly in Taiwan (left) is the pearlescent butterfly with a forewing spread of up to 15 cm; the smallest butterfly is the Taiwan Ji small gray butterfly (right), with a forewing spread of about 1.5
The Purple Butterfly Valley was born
The purple butterfly valley first discovered in Taiwan is in Pingtung, and the discovery process is full of legends. In the 1960s, it was the peak of Taiwan's export of butterflies, and Taiwan also received international attention because of its rich butterfly species and huge numbers.
At that time, there was a high school biology teacher in Taipei, Chen Weishou, who spent his spare time researching and collecting butterflies. Chen Weishou found a strange phenomenon: in the winter when butterflies were rarest, butterfly merchants in Pingtung were constantly supplying processing plants, not only in surprising quantities, but also fresh butterflies of the same species. This anomalous phenomenon caught his attention. He searched in many ways and found that these butterflies were carried down the mountain by the indigenous people of Pingtung one by one to sell to the butterfly merchants, but unfortunately the indigenous people were tight-lipped and refused to disclose any details. Chen Weishou judged from this that There was indeed a wintering butterfly valley in Taiwan, and it was in the mountains of Pingtung.
▲The lifespan of adult butterflies is generally only 1-2 months, but the recaptural records show that the lifespan of purple-spotted butterflies in the overwintering generation can reach more than half a year, or even 8 months.
Chen Weishou spent more than a year doing carpet investigations in areas of Pingtung that he thought were possible, but there were no clues. So he changed the way he investigated, asked teachers and students of primary and secondary schools in the mountainous area to help, and those enthusiastic indigenous students traveled to the mountains without pay, constantly providing him with a lot of information about butterflies, but none of which had anything to do with the wintering butterfly valley. Finally, one day, things took a turn for the better, and an indigenous elementary school student, accompanied by his parents, walked from the mountain to the small town of pingdi, called Chen Weishou and said that he found a river in the air that seemed to be composed of black sand grains, constantly flowing in the same direction, and finally disappeared into a valley in Wanluan Township, Pingtung, and each black dot seemed to be a butterfly.
Chen Weishou rushed to the scene from the south overnight, and he found that the "Quicksand River" in the air had been flowing continuously for several days, and it was nearing its end. When he confirmed from the telescope that each little black spot was indeed a butterfly, he almost cried out with excitement. He followed the butterfly's flow, tracked all the way, and after a difficult time, finally found the end of the "quicksand": in a valley, hundreds of thousands of spotted butterflies perched densely on the trees, and the trees changed color and were covered with a layer of butterfly coat.
▲In addition to the rare wintering butterfly valley in Taiwan, there are also ecological butterfly valleys, such as the Yellow Butterfly Green Valley in Kaohsiung Mino, which is formed by the gathering of pale yellow butterflies.
It took Chen Weishou about three years to find the valley where butterflies overwintered, although it was hard, but it was lucky enough, because Professor Wu Guiha of the University of Toronto, who was also looking for the Butterfly Valley, spent 40 years to find the valley where the Canadian black-veined golden-spotted butterfly wintered, at that time Professor Wu Guiha had changed from a young and strong youth to an old man with white hair. Of course, his harvest is even greater, because he found a place where hundreds of millions of black-veined golden-spotted butterflies spend the winter – in the pine forest of the Mexican mountains thousands of kilometers away from Canada, Professor Wu Guiha is also famous for his natural history.
The wonder of the small striated blue-spotted butterfly
After taking a few pictures of purple-spotted butterflies lined up in leaves on the branches, I retreated to a nearby clearing and waited. If the air gets warm enough later, the purple butterflies will fly. The temperature here rises very slowly, and the woods are so dense that it is not until near noon that a few purple-spotted butterflies begin to fly slowly. I couldn't help but think that ten days ago, in the purple butterfly valley of Maolin Township, Kaohsiung, under almost the same situation, at about 10 o'clock, butterflies began to fly in the forest, like fountains and cooking smoke gushing out from the gaps in the woods, and many butterflies merged into a butterfly stream and flew down the creek ditch. They know there is a trickle of water below that allows them to hydrate.
▲ When the temperature rises, the purple-spotted butterflies gathered together will scatter in all directions, gushing out from all over the forest and moving around.
Just as I was immersed in the memory, the butterflies in front of me suddenly seemed to receive a unified signal, falling off from the crowded branches like an ice shed collapse, and then suddenly flew up like a splashing wave, and in an instant, the entire wooded space was full of dancing butterflies, and the scene was amazing. Because everything came so suddenly, far beyond expectations, I had no time to change the wide-angle lens, and I could only quickly retreat and take a small telescope to take a spectacular picture of the dancing butterflies in the forest.
After a while, the butterflies dispersed like light smoke, some flying up to the top of the canopy, some flying out of the forest, and many stopping at the branches. The vivid woods returned to silence after a few minutes, as if nothing had happened.
In recent years, under the tracking of the Taiwan Butterfly Association and butterfly researchers such as Zhan Jialong, Zhao Renfang, Lu Jinyu and others, many mysteries about the purple butterfly valley have been solved, including the annual migration patterns of these butterflies, the time of three large-scale migrations per year and the exact butterfly route. At the same time, it also arouses the protection and attention of the government and society to migratory butterflies, for example, every April, when they return north through the Erlin Section Expressway in Yunlin County, many butterflies are killed by vehicles in a short crossing section. Later, at the request of the Butterfly Society, the highway authorities cooperated with volunteers to close one or two lanes during this period, which greatly reduced the casualties of butterflies.
Investigations and research have given us a better understanding of the secrets of the migration of the Taiwanese butterfly, which is conducive to protecting them, but interestingly, it has also unearthed more mysteries to be solved: for example, where exactly are they breeding? Are there "non-migratory groups"?
Early the next morning, Li Yuanhe and I, led by Mr. Lu Jinyu, went to Jinlun Village further south. Lu Jinyu, who has been investigating the Purple Butterfly Valley for 9 years, told us that there is a new wintering butterfly valley in the valley behind Jinlun Village. In recent years, the earth's climate has warmed, and the time for butterflies to enter and leave the butterfly valley has also been affected, and the "88 floods" in 2009 have severely damaged the vegetation and rivers in Taitung, and the purple butterfly valley has also been abandoned by the butterfly due to serious damage to vegetation for many years. The Butterfly Valley of Jinlun first appeared in 2010, and the butterflies that spend the winter here are not purple-spotted butterflies, but mainly small-striped blue-spotted butterflies.
▲ Taiwan's purple butterfly valley has the characteristics of multi-species clustering for winter, in addition to 4 kinds of purple spotted butterflies, sometimes mixed with some green spotted butterflies.
The small-striped blue-spotted butterfly has a special ecological habit: when the temperature is about 15 ° C, it will gather between the canopy to form a ball to maintain body temperature. For five years, I have visited the Purple Butterfly Valley every winter and photographed many spectacular scenes of purple butterflies gathering, but because the temperature is not low enough, I can't shoot the small blue-spotted butterflies gathering into balls.
When we arrived, it was about 9:00 a.m., the temperature in the valley was very low, the green butterflies gathered on the big banyan trees on the side of the mountain stream, and the cold current made them squeeze on the central branches of the big trees, in the shape of a small clump, and even a ball of reunion, the weight of the butterfly ball pressed against the branches forced to bend downwards, I finally saw the wonder of the small striated green butterflies gathering into a ball! Thank goodness that nature has finally drawn a shocking and perfect ending for me!
▲ Small striated blue-spotted butterflies that are reunited into "balls" and warm each other.
- END -
Written by Xu Renxiu
Photography 丨 Xu Renxiu
Copyright Notice: The copyright of the graphics and text of this article belongs to the traditional version of "National Panorama Geographic" and "China National Geographic" Chinese, if you need to reprint, please contact "National Panorama Geographic".
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