Date: 05/24/2020

Number: 4

Monarchs spotted while doing our weekly butterfly survey of Mentor Marsh (April 1st to Nov 1st). Our first Monarch sighting last year was on May 19, so we are pretty much on schedule. Some years, I've seen them as early as May 5.

We saw one Monarch in four different areas that we counted as four different individuals. The marsh is approximately 4 1/2 miles long and 1 mile wide. We were there about an hour.

We saw our first Monarch flying fast about eye level or lower on the west side of the boardwalk. It flew close to us, and kept moving, we could track with our binoculars and naked eye. It flew over mostly dried grasses, although some are starting to green up. We never saw the Monarch stop, and we mentioned it to another person we passed several minutes later on the boardwalk and a few minutes later, we heard him call out that he saw the Monarch too. At the far end of the boardwalk, we saw one Monarch pass by us two different times maybe 10 minutes apart, traveling along the east side of the boardwalk, then crossing over to the west side. We did catch other glimpses of Monarchs, but they were close to where we had seen Monarchs already and we assumed they could be the ones we had already counted. The fourth Monarch we saw was flying around the east side of the boardwalk not far from the dirt path between the short section and the long section of boardwalks. We did not see any of the Monarchs slow down to nectar or to seek out Swamp Milkweed, which is starting to emerge. Unfortunately, we were not able to get any pictures.

Mentor, OH

Latitude: 41.7 Longitude: -81.3

Observed by: Mary Ann
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