Date: 08/08/2019

Number: 1000

Because there are SO MANY caterpillars and eggs here this year, there is no hope of counting them. I just visited one of our patches (the 30' x 6' one next to the restaurant). There are still hundreds of caterpillars, varying sizes, and the milkweed is in tatters. There are chrysalids on the eaves and porches of the restaurant. I guess they would be considered wild though they are in town center.

Of course "everyone" remembers "back when" there were Monarchs "everywhere." But in recent years there have been so few that they were nearly forgotten in this area. When I show a "newbie" they usually say "oh, we used to do that when we were little" OR "oh, I've never seen anything like that." This year, there have been clouds of butterflies and as I remarked earlier, thousands of eggs and uncountable numbers of caterpillars. Even those naturalists who had not forgotten the Monarch are commenting that this is the most they've seen in years. Indian Lake is in the central Adirondacks of upstate NY. I have friends in all corners, north, south, east and west Adirondacks and they are all saying the same.

Earlier years, I tried to keep JN current with how many caterpillars I had collected, how many died and how many were released. It isn't even close to possible this year. Every leaf has a hidden egg or cat within. Where we thought we had perhaps 10 in a mesh, there have been twice that released...Even after we clean out yesterday's milkweed, we save it another 2 days and find MORE cats...
Also, a good number of people got involved in our town project last year, and more have started individual meshes at home. At the senior mealsite, people are bringing cats from patches near their driveways or front doors. Kids are bringing them in to the Community Action storefront on Main St. That's new! People have frequently asked me where I find the caterpillars, but now there are so many there' s no need to ask. It has become difficult to find food for them that isn't already inhabited by another monarch.

We are very busy raising and feeding these guys -- even busy trying to ignore them and stop collecting -- we aren't providing much in the way of photos or detailed counts. So I can't keep up with the reports on the JN site, but I really want to be counted because this is such a phenomenon this year, we want to know if it's like this everywhere, and whether the migration will be proportionally as huge as the Indian Lake NY population.

Note: Image shows 8 chrysalids and 1 caterpillar

Indian Lake, NY

Latitude: 43.8 Longitude: -74.3

Observed by: DAISY
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