Date: 05/19/2009

Number: 1

Last evening (May 19th), around 7PM, I spotted my first Monarch of the season. The weather was warm and clear about 70 degrees with a slight breeze. I was driving out to the counryside south of Fairfield to visit a friends garden. While there, we saw several more Monarchs happily enjoying my friends beautiful, most abundant lilacs and early peonies. My friend mentioned that the Monarchs had been here in her area for a few weeks already. She was surprised about this herself because the weather had been so cold. In fact, last week we had night temperatures in the 30's for two evenings in a row plus two days of stormy weather.

By the way if direction is important..The first Monarch I saw was heading East. I mention this because when they left for Mexico last FAll, they were headed West. They have their own internal GPS tracking system.

Ah, the invincibility of the Monarchs...What a wonder of Nature!

Fairfield, IA

Latitude: 41 Longitude: -91.9

Observed by: Sharon
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