Date: 10/04/2009

Number: 1

That's weird....I just missed Randy, I spent 10/4 from 9am - noon tagging monarchs on the east side of the Falls Lake RR trestle in Granville County. I tagged 30 but estimated a total of 100 nectaring on Baccharus, goldenrod, rabbit tobacco?, honeysuckle and a couple other things I couldn't ID.

At the trestle at 1030 in 15 minutes I counted 10 flying overhead sw. On a good day they fly from 9am to 5pm or so, about 8 hours. With my estimate of 40/hour and Randy's of 30/hour, even with the average that's more than 200 monarchs a day during peak migration.

I found these sites last year with Baccharus clearly being the most visited nectar source, and noted peak migration range anywhere from Sep 29 - Oct 12, about 8 or 9 full peak days on a given year totaling close to two thousand monarchs maybe!!

The ones I watched flew directly SW, over the trees. I would have expected them to fly low and follow the mostly sw rail line and essentially a nectar highway, but they flew high and continued on from that point.

The only milkweed patches I know of up in that region don't produce nearly these daily numbers so they are obviously all mostly migrating monarchs. Keep hoping to get a recapture of someone else tagging north of me so I know where they came from.

Oddly, enormous patches of baccharus or other such nectar AWAY from the lake south of I85 hold nearly ZERO migratory monarchs. But this trestle from the east, the Ellerbe Creek trestle from the west (same rail line) and one powerline cut near US15 have had last year and this year, held serious numbers of migratory monarchs. Which is why I bought extra tags this year!! The right nectar along the right flight path, location, location, location!

Courtesy of Carolina Leps

Falls Lake, NC

Latitude: 35.9 Longitude: -78.6

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