Date: 10/12/2006

Number: 1

Up to Thursday (Oct. 12) afternoon's cold front, I had been seeing individual monarchs sporadically over the past two weeks all over town. Thursday afternoon, the cold front came thru pushing thousands of monarchs in front starting around 2:30pm. As the temperature dropped 20 degrees from the low 90's and the rain started an hour later and the monarchs disappeared. Then around 5:00, the skies cleared and with temps in the mid 70's, the monarchs jumped back in the air. I drove downtown Austin and the monarchs were picking their way thru the tall buildings by the thousands.

Friday and Saturday steady streams floated by with 10-15 visible directly overhead at all times. It was fun watching the snouts interacting with the larger monarchs. The snouts seemed to be
"harassing" the monarchs. Perhaps, the snouts objected to their mass
movement being upstaged by the much larger and more colorful monarchs?!!!!! (For those unfamiliar with the snouts Mike Quinn and others have been referencing, they are a dull tanish orange about the size of the empty space your index finger encircles when you make an "OK" sign.)

Late Saturday afternoon, flew to Dallas. Sunday morning we drove 200 miles from Dallas westward to near Abaline, then back to Austin late in the afternoon. We drove thru scattered showers all day, yet every time the showers let up the monarchs were on the move. The numbers were low, with no more than 5 visible at any one time, and more typically singles moving southward. No snouts were seen the entire 450 mile drive.

Courtesy of Monarch Watch

Austin, TX

Latitude: 30.2 Longitude: -97.7

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