First monarch sighting of the year; about 1.5 miles south of Rougemont at North Carolina State University Hill Forest.

I was actually really startled by this monarch. I had been seeing various swallowtails for over 2 weeks now, but I wasn't expecting a monarch. This is way earlier than I've ever seen one, but everything else is early this year too -- the trees, flowers, shrubs, grass, some birds, etc. I'm not sure if the milikweed is out yet (haven't checked), but other nectar sources are coming "online" with each passing day. Many of the trees and shrubs are flowering, and many of our native wildflowers have really taken off this week and are whole-heartedly growing (though last night's cooler spell might have slowed them a bit). Luckily, we haven't seen any near freezing or freezing temps with these cooler spells.

I would have to bank on the fact that this monarch came inland from the coast. Some of the birds showing up right now are coming in from the coast (i.e. yellow-throated warbler...classified as a neo-tropical migratory songbird).

Coast-to-mountains movement is pretty common in North Carolina with a number of species of birds, insects, etc. Over the winter, many of the short-distance migrant birds come down from the mountains and north to the Piedmont and Coastal Plain, and then move west when things kick in during the Spring. Some radar experiments in the last few years show birds moving in a NW or WNW direction as the sunsets in the evenings during Spring migration. There have even been reports of some individual neo-tropical migratory birds on the coast of NC, SC, GA, and FL during mild winters. There are many observations of species arriving on the coast and then holding until temperatures and leaf-out begin further inland. As with the yellow-throated warbler I saw last week... I doubt he ever really went "south" for the winter, but hung out in North America and just has an early start because he had less distance to travel and the weather has been mild -- just speculation though, as I have no way to prove it with evidence/data.