September winds from the north and northwest gently push millions of migrating monarch butterflies through the Cape May peninsula toward the Atlantic coast, beginning a 2000-mile journey to their winter home in the forests of the Sierra Madre Mountains of central Mexico. The following spring they mate, the males die, and the females journey back to North America, laying eggs on milkweed plants as they go. They may travel as far north as the Gulf coast states before they too die. The next generation continues the northward migration until the monarchs once again repopulate the entire region of the milkweed plant. Four to five generations may live and reproduce throughout the summer, but the last generation, along with other monarchs from eastern North America, seeks refuge from the cold of winter and begins the migration cycle again.