Date: 09/29/2019

Number: 1000

A glorious sight....photo doesn’t do it justice....more Monarchs in one place than I’ve ever seen.

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

We do not know when the roost first formed. I was able to see 3 roosts on Sunday. I live in Aurora, NE. A friend called me about 4:00 pm and said she had some Monarchs in the tree so I went to see them. I think there could have been a couple hundred in that roost. We tagged 35 of them and there were MANY more that we couldn’t easily reach. Most of those were in a crab apple tree.

While leaving that site I was called to the Leadership Center, also in Aurora, NE. That is a camp-like conference grounds on the edge of town. There two of the Educators from the Edgerton Science Center in Aurora spotted a roost at least five times larger than the one I had just visited. At this site they were hanging in several different varieties of trees. Deb M. (from the Edgerton) still had about 100 tags and I still had 25 so we used all of those. She estimated the number at a thousand. Actually there may have been more. I also found another area about a half mile from that one that had about half as many.

I’ve been “raising” Monarchs for about 15 years and I have NEVER seen anything like this. It was glorious!

The day was quite windy, partly sunny and in the 80’s. It got into the 60’s that night. I went back yesterday afternoon (9/30/19) and there were still some in each of the three locations but not nearly as many. Yesterday it was extremely windy with the wind blowing south to north. I have no idea how they were able to fly in that wind.

All 3 locations were fairly well protected from the wind. There wasn’t a large source of nectar in any of there areas, just a few flowers here and there.

This was an experience I will NEVER forget ❤️❤️❤️

Photo courtesy of Debbie M. (from Edgerton Center).

Aurora, NE

Latitude: 40.9 Longitude: -98

Observed by: Dottie
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