Date: 09/14/2014

Number: 3000

On Sunday, September 14, 2014 my friend, Mary L and myself went to one of the Waterman Prairie units in southern O'Brien County, Iowa to photograph a family of Trumpeter Swams that nest there. We parked in the roadside parking area and started our walk back to the pond. It was a beautiful and sunny late summer afternoon, the temperature hovered around 68 degrees and there was a mild breeze from the SW at about 10-15 MPH. Our visit lasted from about 4:00 - 6:00 pm.

Waterman Prairie at this location is in the Little Sioux River Valley and consists of rolling hills, valleys, and river overlooks now covered in prairie grasses and flowers. There is a lot of big bluestem, maximillian sunflower, goldenrod, coneflowers, and numerous other prairie plants. A small portion of the preserve is leased to an area farmer, so intermixed amongst the prairie grasses are smaller plots of corn, sunflowers, and alfalfa. The farmer gets to harvest these plots but must leave a certain percentage of the crop stand through the winter as food plots for the wildlife.

We started our hike down the path bordered on one side by mostly big bluestem and on the other side a corn plot backed by a sunflower plot. We were happy to see a few Monarchs flying here, perhaps 2 or 3 every 10 feet or so. After a short walk we left the standing corn and entered a field (photo) of approximately 30-40 acres that at one time may have been a hayfield but looks now like it has been seeded with a prairie/wildflower mix and is in its second or third year since established. There are a lot more prairie flowers here along with a good stand of red clover. This is where we encountered the mass of Monarchs.

As we walked across this field they would just rise up in a cloud - magical. About the only way I can describe it is like being in a Butterfly House say at an arboretum where the butterflies are flying all around you, only this was an open air one. Hard to place a number on how many were in the field but it was the same concentration across the entire field. If you would stand and turn in a circle there would probably be 20-30 you could count in a 50 foot radius. And there were probably two to three times that feeding on the flowers. It appeared they especially liked the red clover. There were easily thousands, perhaps 10's of thousand of Monarchs in that field and they appeared to mainly feeding rather than passing through.

I did return on the following Sunday, September 21, 2014. The weather and time was similiar to my first visit except the wind was out of the north. While their were a few butterflys in the fields this time, no Monarchs were seen. I assume they have moved further south.

P. S. - We didn't find the Trumpeters on this trip - they had left the pond they had spent the summer on but I found them a few days on a neighboring pond outside of Waterman Prairie.

Waterman Prairie, IA

Latitude: 43 Longitude: -95.4

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