Date: 08/23/2017

Number: 20

The photo is taken on our island campsite looking across the water to the French River Delta Main land. I watched one monarch nectar on small aster-like flowers seen in the photo. The monarch was very sensitive to my presence, so I was unable to take good photos of the butterfly.


This was an exciting sighting of monarchs starting with the fist day of our one week (start 8/20) canoe camping trip on the Bustard Islands, a group of about 600 rocky islands about 4 km from the mouth of the French River Delta on the Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada.

On our first day crossing the large body of water to the Islands, I spotted a monarch crossing along with us. We were about 2 KM off shore.

Our group of four saw one or two monarchs flying in our camp site almost every day.

The best day was 8/23 when monarchs started streaming past us while we sat at our campsite or while we were exploring the area by canoe. We saw them at regular intervals. We were calling out MONARCH every time we saw one. One time I counted three together. We estimated that we saw 20 or more! And I am sure that more monarchs were crossing that day - seen in other areas of the islands. A strong NW wind was certainly helping them along.

Killarney, ON

Latitude: 45.9 Longitude: -80.9

Observed by: Donna
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