Date: 10/03/2011

Number: 5000

Denise Gibbs of Chincoteague Monarch Monitoring Project reports from Assateague Island, VA:

October 7
Tom's Cove, South Assateague Island, 9am: Wind N at 5mph, full sun, 65 degrees F


Monarchs were migrating down the beach this morning. They soared with very little flapping. On a site count at 9am, I counted 60 per hour. Since they didn't have to fight against the wind, they were stopping often to nectar on the seaside goldenrod. On Chincoteague Island, the town square garden's lantana bushes were full of nectaring monarchs. Then on the 4-hour drive home, I saw monarchs migrating along and over highways with regularity. The eastern shore of the Chesapeake at Kent Island was especially busy with migrating and nectaring monarchs.

October 6 am
Recovered a tagged monarch! It was not one of mine. It was found and photographed today (Oct 6) at 6:58am in a roost of several hundred monarchs on seaside goldenrod at the water's edge of Tom's Cove. It would have flown into the roost sometime between 4-7pm last evening, Oct 5. The number is PLY 162. If anyone reading this can claim it, please let me know where you tagged it and the date/time. Thanks! And, if anyone is going to Kiptopeke for the the birding festival during the next few days, please keep a lookout for my tagged monarchs. The letters are PEP.

I photographed several monarch roosts on seaside goldenrod along the beach this morning. These were the biggest roosts on goldenrod that I have ever seen here. Sunrise was at 7:01am. The wind was NNE at 8mph, temp was 61 degrees with clear skies. The monarchs began leaving the roosts at 7:10am (there was no hesitation or lingering), and by 8am there was not a monarch to be found on south Assateague. At 9am there were a few monarchs left at the tip of Chincoteague Island, but they soared off over Chincoteague Bay as I watched. The wind is still NNE but it has picked up speed to 15mph-- excellent conditions for monarch migration, just not on this island. The folks on the Virginia eastern shore of the Chesapeake are likely seeing lots of monarchs just about now.

The weather forecast shows the next cold front for Chincoteague NWR on Friday, Oct 14, followed by NW wind and full sun on Saturday Oct 15. If that forecast holds, local monarch watchers may want to plan a trip to be here on that day. I may be back as well.

October 5 pm
A mid-day site census had 860 monarchs per hour, and these numbers were about the same most of the day. I have had higher numbers many times in past years, but today's migration was different because the flow of monarchs remained constant during all the daylight hours. Plus, the wind speed and direction remained the same-- NW at around 10-15mph.

Monarchs were also spread out over all areas of both islands (about a 5-mile wide band of monarchs). At mid-day, there were migrating monarchs going south on Chincoteague's Main Street and on the bridge that connects Chincoteague Island to the Delmarva Peninsula. Monarchs were also stopping frequently to nectar on any available nectar source. After two days of sun, the seaside goldenrod is rapidly showing more blooms, and monarchs were taking advantage of this offering. On Assateague, the nectar of choice was from the flowers of groundsel-tree (Baccharis halimifolia). On Chincoteague, monarchs were dropping into residential flower gardens to sip from large lantana bushes and from the large globular bushes of a New England aster cultivar. These were loaded with hundreds of deep purple blooms, and just about each one had a nectaring monarch on it. I checked these plants at 6:30pm and monarchs had settled in them to roost for the night. This presents a problem. The town of Chincoteague's Mosquito Man drives all over the island in his pick-up truck spraying malathion every Tues, Thurs, and Saturday at 7am. So that means I will have to trespass on private property to be at the New England aster at 6am to pluck off all the roosting monarchs, put them in my cage and transport them over to Assateague.

Just before sunset this evening, my volunteers and I walked to all the usual roost sites along Tom's Cove. We found at least a dozen roosts on seaside goldenrod, so heavy with monarchs that they were bent over almost to the ground. They were photographed and filmed by my photographer volunteer and will be posted on my new facebook page in a week or so. The images clearly show why seaside goldenrod is undeniably the most important monarch plant at this location on the island.

During the night tonight, the wind is supposed to shift and come out of the northeast. It will push thousands of monarchs safely off this island to the Delmarva, where they can nectar and have a respite from the ocean. But they will need to rebuild their fat reserves before they reach Kiptopeke, where they will have to cross the wide mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. I hope someone at Kiptopeke State Park recovers one of my tagged monarchs, because it would be interesting to find their arrival date and time. If they fly nonstop, they can be there within a day (it is 70 miles away), but if it takes several days, I would know that they stopped to refuel along the way.

October 5

I arrived at the beach at 6:30 am this morning so that I could photograph the roosting monarchs before sunrise and just after when the light is a soft peachy color. The wind was NW at 5mph, clear skies, and temp 60 degrees. With such ideal migration conditions, I thought the monarchs would leave the roosts en mass soon after sunrise, but that was not the case. It had been humid during the night and their wings were still damp. So those monarchs that roosted along the beach in the seaside goldenrod stayed put. I was able to videotape one roost along the road that was in a bayberry bush fully exposed to the sun as the monarchs lifted off about 8am. About 100 or so lifted off together, followed by 6-7 at a time until they were all airborne. Such a beautiful ballet.

I just got a "monarch alert" call from one of the refuge staff. There is apparently a bush with thousands of monarchs still clinging so I will close for now and finish this report later. Off I go. Love days like this!

October 4 pm

The monarchs migrated down the beach today in a continuous stream from 8:15am to 6:15pm. The average was about 600 per hour. Once they arrived at the narrow section of the island (about 100 yards between ocean and bay), they stopped to nectar on seaside goldenrod or they turned around and headed back over to the causeway. One side of the causeway has a freshwater impoundment and the other has a saltmarsh. The causeway is elevated so monarchs stayed low in the bayberry thicket at the edge of the marsh, completely out of the wind. The grounsel-tree (bushes) in this spot were loaded with nectaring monarchs all day. This is where I could safely tag and release them, without risking having them blow backwards out over the ocean. However it wasn't so safe for me because if I stood too long in one place, I would sink down about a foot into the soft mud, making me an easy target for the saltmarsh mosquitoes (the things we do for Monarch Watch . . .)

The winds remained from the NW all day, usually from 10-15mph, but picking up speed to about 20mph for an hour or two. By 6:30 there were some sizeable roosts forming along the causeway near the NPS visitor center in the bayberry bushes that had survived Irene, and in the bare branches of those that did not. I estimated about 5,000 monarchs in 7 separate roosts (that I could see from the road), but there were likely more in the dense thickets on the small islands in the freshwater impoundments, since I saw monarchs flying into them at dusk.

This was one of those days that left lasting impressions, both in my memory and on my memory card. Monarchs, buckeyes, green darners, black saddlebags, Carolina saddlebags, wandering gliders, spot-winged gliders, Peregrine falcons, merlins, harriers, bald eagles, osprey, tree swallows, ruddy turnstones, black-bellied plovers, semi-palmated sandpipers, palm warblers, yellow-rumped warblers, cormorants, herons, egrets, terns, gulls, sanderlings, yellowlegs, oystercatchers, and pelicans all graced the island with their beauty and lifted the spirits of those few who opened their eyes to see it.

October 4 am
5:30-7am: heavy rain, then at 8am the skies cleared, the wind was NNW at 8mph with full sun, temp 56 degrees F. I walked 1.5 miles south on the beach to some small dunes near the coast guard station that managed to keep some clusters of seaside goldenrod. I found several dozen roosting monarchs whose wings were still damp from the rain. But by 8:15 the island had come alive with migrating monarchs. The wind direction and speed was almost perfect for monarch migration on this island. Those that soared on the wind until they reached the ocean's edge were able to flap back to land without too much effort. Some were coming down to rest and nectar on the seaside goldenrod. I checked each one, and all had extremely lean abdomens. A steady wave of monarchs continued as I walked north back up the beach. I stopped to do a site count, and I counted 94 monarchs flying past me in 15 minutes, or nearly 400 monarchs per hour.

From 9:30-10:30 am the wind shifted and picked up speed-- NW at 15mph. This makes it a bit more difficult for migrating monarchs to avoid being blown out over the water, so many were doing this and then flapping nonstop to get back to the beach. Some came down to rest on bare wet sand. Many others were back-tracking north along the bayshore (Spartina grass being used as a wind buffer) then making their way back across the causeway to reach the buffer of the bayberry thickets.

Heading back out now to try to net some to tag. More later.

October 3
12:30pm: partly sunny, 61 degrees F, wind WNW at 8mph. The mid-day road census had 17 monarchs. All monarchs were migrating along the ocean beach at a height of about 5-10'. At 3:30 the sky darkened and monarchs started backtracking north along Tom's Cove to find roosting spots. Since all the shrubs and trees are gone, they roosted in the remaining seaside goldenrod and in the Spartina grasses of the saltmarsh. After the storm passed, the temperature dropped and the monarchs remained there to roost for the night.

If the large numbers of monarchs reported earlier today at Cape May crossed the Delaware Bay before day's end, they should be here by late day tomorrow. We will see.

Editor's Note: This report is dated October 3rd, the evening the estimated 5,000 monarchs would have formed the roosts viewed the morning of October 4th.

Assateague Island, VA

Latitude: 38 Longitude: -75.3

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