Date: 10/02/2011

Number: 400

October 5
Oct 2 I tagged 117 and saw about 400.

Oct 3, same exact place and nearly the same time I tagged 8 and saw total of 12.

I have never seen a one day push of monarchs through my area. In what I thought was a more typical migration here, I would see a week of singletons, a week of double digits peaking with maybe a day of triple digits and then a week of singles again. This season has ben a week and a half of singletons, one day of triple digits, now whats next another week and a half of singletons??? Wierd.

October 2
After several days of a pitiful migration, the cold front seemed to push down some big numbers. From Sep 20 to Oct 1 I tagged 17 monarchs. Today Oct 2 I tagged 117 and there were at least thrice that I was not able to catch. I had 15 folks with me on the CBS field trip this afternoon, and nearly every one of them caught and helped tag a monarch, many caught several. As the group left, I returned to our first spot and hit the mother load. Tagged 75 in 1.5 hours and saw another 300 at least, three times I caught "doubles" in my net, and at one dead end spot at the lake I had a Baccharus shrub full of them and I netted SEVEN in one net swing!!! A new personal record! One was a recapture, the other six were tagged and released. Nectar was an even mix of Goldenrod, Bidens and Baccharus. I hope to get out this week to get more, from the last two years this seems to be a later migration, or at least a later "peak". Bidens is about bloomed out.

Courtesy of Carolina Leps

Falls Lake, NC

Latitude: 35.9 Longitude: -78.6

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