Date: 05/29/2013

Number: 1

Four of us saw a monarch tonight flying around our evergreen trees. I'm worried about him as our returning milkweed is still only 3-4" high! We do have some greenhouse milkweed just put in at about 18" high, hope they can find it!

It did not have a flight pattern of a painted lady and was too big compared to those we have seen in past years. There were four of us in the yard and all confirmed that we were looking at the same thing. We watched her fly for 2-3 minutes before disappearing in the tree. It has been a common behavior of monarchs to take shelter in our backyard trees before rain (which was the conditions when we spotted her/him). I raise monarchs from egg to release for a local preschool so I am quite sure of what we saw. We've released about 30-40 from our home/neighborhood school in past years. The only doubt being that it seemed strange as I've been tracking the migration and my returning milkweed is only between 2-6" high. I know of others with milkweed in the area, though, that is significantly higher than mine. We probably just caught a lucky glance en route to better milkweed.

I wish I could have gotten a picture, but I was quite taken by surprise myself. Our lilacs are in full bloom, though, which often is when I see my first monarchs (rather than by the milkweed timetable).

Richfield, MN

Latitude: 44.9 Longitude: -93.3

Observed by: Shannon
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