Date: 09/08/2019

Number: 550

Roosts of 50 to 0ne hundred seen in mature oaks and maples throughout park north of the splash pad. Observed from 6:15pm to 7:45pm. Dozens of monarchs continually flying in with roosts building throughout the evening.

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

The evening of September 7th we went to the tip of Point Pelee NationalPark. There was a strong westerly wind blowing. We only found a small roost of maybe 50 monarchs in two trees. We did not venture further because a park volunteer told us they had reports of large roosts at Seacliff Park. We headed to Seacliff, but it was almost dark. Once there we spotted about 300 monarchs roosting on the lower branches in 4 trees, I am sure there were many more, but it was too dark to see, especially the higher branches. Winds were WNW 15km/hr, overnight low 15C.

We returned to Seacliff Park on the evening of September 8th. I started looking for roosts at 6:15pm. They were concentrated in about 4 trees. If the roosts were small, I counted individual monarchs. Larger roosts, I would count out roughly 20 and then estimate how many sections of this size were in the roost. My husband was doing the same thing.I believe our counts were conservative. There were many individual monarchs scattered about that did not get counted, nor the ones flying around. This is the evening we reported 550 monarchs.

On September 8th the wind was NE 15km/hr. All of the roosts were on the south side of the trees, sheilded from the wind. These are very large, mature oaks and maples.
The nighttime low was 15C.
There are no nectar plants directly in the park. The Leamington marina area has gardens a few km to the east, but I am unsure of what flowers there are in those beds.

I cannot confirm when the roost first formed, it was already there on the 7th and even earlier than that according to the park volunteer. Possibly by a few days?

Seacliff Park, ON

Latitude: 42 Longitude: -82.6

Observed by: MONICA
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