Date: 08/29/2019

Number: 1500

We saw for sure more than 1500, probably a population of 10 000 individuals!

Editor's note: contacted observer for more details on this sighting

Additional notes from observer:
I was excited to see so much monarchs in our experimental farm!!! I understood that this roosting was also present last year, but I didn’t observe it personally.

This year, the first observation [of roosting] was near August 22, and the last time we observed them was August 29. This morning [Sep 3] there was no butterfly at all.

Most of the observations has been made by Michel Fortin, our farm manager, who is doing his morning tour of experimental plots around 7:30-8:00 am.
On August 29, we arrived just before the sunset (7:00 pm) and stayed there for 45 min. It was impossible to count them all…We are pretty sure that we saw about 1,500 individuals, but we estimated the population at 10,000 monarchs…they were all over the rows of spruce. Just in front, there was a field of buckwheat in bloom and we observed the monarchs feeding on them.

The overnight temperature was 15°C, low wind (between 5 and 10 Km/h), wind direction: South.
Some of the monarchs were facing north in the spruce, but there was also other clusters facing south.

Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC

Latitude: 45.3 Longitude: -73.3

Observed by: Annie-Eve
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