The butterfly garden at Lighthouse Point Park was planted to attract butterflies and birds and to provide them with a reliable source of food. Monarch butterflies migrate every autumn, traveling as many as 3,000 miles to wintering grounds in Mexico and Southern California, with a long-lived autumn “Methuselah generation” surviving seven to eight months to make the journey because monarchs cannot survive freezing northern winters and the plants they depend on disappear in winter. Western monarchs migrate to the southern coast of California, while eastern North American populations migrate to central Mexico, traveling about fifty miles a day, soaring on air currents to conserve energy, and using the sun to navigate. After about two months, monarchs bound for Mexico reach high-elevation oyamel fir forests, where cool temperatures and constant fog provide suitable winter habitat, and they cluster together on trunks and branches. In spring, the overwintering monarchs travel partway back north before laying eggs and dying, and about four more generations complete the return. Many other butterflies and moths also migrate, including Fiery Skippers, Cloudless Sulphurs, Red Admirals, Painted Ladies, Mourning Cloaks, and more than a dozen species of noctuid moths, and these migrants depend on stopover oases where they can find food and lay eggs. As natural habitats shrink, gardens like this one become increasingly important for conserving migrating butterflies. Pollination links plants and insects in mutual survival and reproduction, as bees and butterflies feed on nectar while carrying pollen among blossoms and fertilizing plants, and hummingbirds can also serve as pollinators. Many flowers have evolved bright colors, elaborate shapes, and even ultraviolet patterns invisible to humans but visible to birds, bees, and butterflies, guiding pollinators to nectar. Caterpillars face many predators, so some butterflies protect their young by laying eggs on specific plants that provide food and defense. Monarchs lay eggs only on milkweed, whose foul taste makes the caterpillars and later the adults distasteful and toxic, signaled by their bright orange color. Red Admirals lay eggs on plants in the nettle family, and older caterpillars make nests from nettle leaves and silk, while Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars use false eyes near their heads to resemble snakes and deter predators. A bird and butterfly garden can support local wildlife by using native or non-invasive plants, providing nectar plants and caterpillar food plants, sunny basking stones, nectar-rich flowers for hummingbirds, winter cover and seeds, berry-producing shrubs and trees, water, and dense shelter. The monarch life cycle begins with an egg laid on milkweed that hatches in three to five days, followed by a caterpillar stage, a chrysalis, and an adult butterfly, with females ready to lay eggs after about four days.