Fallout on the Virginia Coast Last Friday
A 'fallout' is said to occur when weather conditions shift suddenly during migration and make travel so difficult that the migrants seem to 'fall out' of the sky. "In all my years here at Chincoteague, I had never seen a fallout of monarchs—until this afternoon," reported Denise Gibbs on October 8th. "Today in the interdune area, there may have been several hundred thousand monarchs. I walked one mile along the shore of Tom's Cove and still did not reach the end of the nectaring monarchs."

Image courtesy of Denise Gibbs