Date: 10/22/2021

Number: 97

One hour count in Cape May Point NJ. Many were either migrating or looking to roost.

[Additional information contributed by observer, added by Journey North, 10/26/21]:


. . while 97 is a good number for one count, it only ranks 5th on the counts I’ve done this fall. From 9/26-10/3 my counts (4) averaged 150, so that’s why I didn’t call this the peak flight.

Method is based on the census method that the Monarch Monitoring Project of the Cape May Bird Observatory has been using for 30 years. My differences, I count only in the Borough of Cape May Point(3.5 miles trip), while they use all of Cape Island (5 Miles). Also one big difference is that I will stop and count at a garden where I see a-lot of activity (but not leave the car) and their counters must maintain 20-25 mph for their whole count. Overall most of my counts are actual counts. Very seldom has there been so much activity that I need to estimate.

All of my counts until this past weekend have started at 2 PM and take about 45 minutes. This past weekend I needed to move to 1 PM.

Most of the monarchs I count are nectaring, since I am observing gardens. Part of my route takes me along the dunes and there I can observe the movement. However, you need to understand the geography of the area. Cape May Point is at the very tip of New Jersey, surrounded by large bodies of water on 3 sides. The monarchs hesitate to cross a large body of water, so their flight is erratic. We have observed many that start across the ocean and get a couple of hundred feet offshore and come back. Some, after coming down from the north along the Atlantic Ocean, will go back north along the Delaware Bay looking for a shorter route across the water. So it is very difficult to describe a trend to the monarch flight. However, they all seem to leave somehow.

The one exception might be after a roost, once the sun warms their wings, there might be a general trend to head south over the ocean to Delaware. But even that is not very predictable. We had a fairly large roost on Thursday morning 10/21 and it seemed like those monarchs just stayed at the point all day.

Right now monarchs generally have just 4 flowers to nectar on. Vitex, assuming the gardener has deadheaded this summer, lantana, Mexican sunflower and seaside goldenrod. They don’t seem to go to the cultivated variety. Nothing else that they seem to like is really in bloom this late in October.

[Report moved from Monarch Adult Sighted to Monarch PEAK Migration by Journey North, 08/31/2022]

Cape May Point, NJ

Latitude: 38.9 Longitude: -75

Observed by: Bob
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