Date: 04/25/2011

Number: 1

I cut down my butterfly bushes today and moved my butterfly house. As I was hanging clothes, right where my butterfly house was, there appeared a monarch on my sheets on the line. I was just so excited. I have never seen one this early in the spring. You can only imagine how shocked/surprised I was to see a butterfly much less a Monarch this early in the year. I am sure it was a Monarch. I only wish I would have had my camera with me but I was outdoors retrieving my bed clothes off the line and it was 24 degrees c. out that day.

Editor's Note

While this unusually early Nova Scotia monarch may have originated from a release, we are including it on the map because 1) the observer confirmed she was confident in identifying the monarch, 2) several times in past years we have received early northern sightings from points on the Atlantic Coast, 3) a warm air mass, with south winds, was in place at the time of the sighting and 4) the coastal microclimate typically causes earlier spring phenology (and we see hummingbirds and other migrants moving northward more quickly along the coast).

Boylston, NS

Latitude: 45.4 Longitude: -61.5

Observed by: Carmen
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