Date: 07/06/2018
Number: 2
It seems like we’ve got lots of healthy looking common milkweeds currently growing and blooming in fallow fields and along country roads in our area, but thus far we’ve observed little evidence of any Monarchs. That may have begun to change today (7/6/2018).
At the undeveloped north edge of a cornfield by Jacksonville Road (lat. 40.9294° & long. -77.7518°) at about 1:00 PM we spotted two Monarch butterflies. I was able to get close enough to one nectaring on the flowers of a common milkweed to determine that it was a female. (Sorry, but I didn’t have a camera with me, so no photo.) My guess is that the other was a male based on its behavior. It mostly circled the area and the only time that we saw it land was when it did so on the same flower head as the confirmed female. This resulted in a very brief tight circling flight of both, but clearly no mating resulted.
At the time of this observation it was mostly sunny with a few high clouds and conditions were approximately:
Bellefonte, PA
Latitude: 40.9 Longitude: -77.8
Observed by: R. Timothy
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