Date: 08/30/2012

Number: 120

Thursday, August 30th was another wonderful butterfly day at Point Lepreau. Wednesday’s strong westerly winds made for ideal conditions to blow Monarch butterflies to the coast, I decided to pack up my nets and tags and make an afternoon visit to the Point in search of Monarchs to tag.

I had made three previous trips to Point Lepreau and tagged a total of 115 at that location, and Jean and I tagged 20 more at Southwest Head on Grand Manan early this week. So I went down yesterday (8/30) with 40 tags remaining and the hope that I might use the rest of them up.

When I arrived at the tip of the Point the stands of goldenrod and aster were covered with large orange, black and white butterflies. There were dozens of MONARCHS nectaring in areas that were sheltered from the stiff southwest wind. And with them were many AMERICAN LADIES and RED ADMIRALS along with a few CABBAGE WHITES, COMMON SULPHURS and COMMON WOOD NYMPHS.

Within an hour I easily netted the 40 Monarchs I needed to complete my summer’s tagging effort and I could almost certainly have tagged two or three times that number with no problem. There seemed to be a steady trickle of new Monarchs arriving from further up the coast and all were very intent on feeding once they arrived at the several hectares of blooms at the Point.

Courtesy of Monarch Watch

Point Lepreau, NB

Latitude: 45.1 Longitude: -66.5

Observed by:
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