Date: 09/09/2021

Number: 200

Very windy cool day, hoping to see a few migratory beauties. Stumbled upon 200 feeding and fluttering not far from the beach. Breathtaking!

[Additional information contributed by observer, added by Journey North, 09/10/21]:
It was very windy and cool, high in the 60’s, yesterday with lake effect clouds coming across Lake Erie. We, my husband and I, didn’t think we would see many monarchs as the wind was so strong along the beach. We had already walked an hour and only saw 5 monarchs a little inland in sheltered areas. As we were walking back to the car, we saw a path labeled, Fishing Access, so we thought we’d at least see where it led.
The path is long and sheltered by large trees on one side and a large meadow of boneset and goldenrod on the other. We couldn’t believe our eyes as we kept seeing more and more monarchs feeding heavily on the boneset and so many flying in a SW direction. There were also a few roosting in the sun at start of path. It was about 2:20pm.
After a lot of drinking in the miracle of being in the middle of so many beautiful butterflies we divided areas and did our best to count by 25. It was not easy but we felt 200 was fairly accurate. It looked like it would be a very good roost spot as well. This count was over an hour of time. Most monarchs were not floating very high. I’m guessing between 15-30 feet while many were feeding at 5-6 ft on boneset.

From what we could see most were in good condition and I did observe a pair mating on the boneset.
We are planing to visit area again next week.
So exciting.

Painesville, OH

Latitude: 41.8 Longitude: -81.3

Observed by: Chris
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