Date: 04/15/2017

Number: 1

somewhat faded, moving too briskly away from lake (west) to determine gender. I was surprised too, because of how early it was. I’ve never seen them this early up here. Now I’m going to look for my milkweed in my yard and for eggs!! I’ve taken Doug Taron’s butterfly monitoring training but I don’t have a regular transect assignment yet.

Weather conditions: Sunny, low-to-mid-80s, quite windy - 40mph gusts? I was running a natural areas restoration workday. Weather Underground has the following record for yesterday:
Wind Speed 17 mph (SSW)
Max Wind Speed 33 mph
Max Gust Speed 42 mph

Location: Near the lakefront, dune and swale habitat, in a remnant natural area that is usually rich with several different kinds of milkweeds - A. syriaca, A. tuberosa, Asc. viridiflora, A. verticillata. (There is also A. incarnata and A. purpurea in adjoining areas but I have not seen them at our site yet). The total natural areas acreage: about 4,160 acres, encompassing six miles of Lake Michigan shorelinem, much of which is natural areas remnant. (Hosah Prairie is just 22.7 acres of that ecosystem but it’s a fairly pristine remnant if you don’t count the new invasives)

Everything was just starting to green up. Western sunflower basal leaves were about an inch tall. The native grasses - little bluestem and sand reed, mostly, but other species too - were just starting to emerge. I did not see any milkweed sprouts yet, but then again I wasn’t looking for them. (Hindsight is always 20/20, right? ;)). We were doing our last search-and-destroy mission for non-native buckthorn and honeysuckle, the latter of which WAS leafing out pretty fully, before resuming brush-cutting efforts next fall.

At other sites nearby, early spring ephemerals - hepatica, spring beauty, bloodroot, are in bloom right now; also dandelions are starting to appear on lawns further south of where I live, but not yet blooming in my neighborhood, which is about 55mi south of Hosah Prairie, where we saw the monarch.

There was one other variety of butterfly seen that day but it was moving fast and I couldn’t tell whether it was a painted lady or an admiral; little smaller than a monarch. No swallowtails seen. Some native bees. Two different species of snakes active - garter and one other I did not see that was reported as not identified to species. I personally saw the monarch. I raise them and it was flying around - looking for milkweed? - slow enough to ID to species but not gender. It looked somewhat faded to me.

Didn’t take a photo, sorry - it moved out of sight pretty quickly, and I was wrangling several volunteers new to natural areas management, so had to stay focused on them.

But I did see the monarch the once, and thought it was worth the report, since I had been following d-plex and their progress north!

Zion, IL

Latitude: 42.4 Longitude: -87.8

Observed by: Kathleen
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