Date: 07/01/2024

Number: 2

Happy Canada Day to me! I have never witnessed the act of mating before. The attached camera phone photo doesn’t do it any justice but if you look in the photograph for a red and a blue mark in the background and draw those down to make an inverted triangle, you will see a pair of Monarchs very blurry on the top of a piece of vegetation in the foreground. I will try to forward a better photograph off of my Canon SLR. Spotted a male patrolling a beautiful patch of Milkweed in full bloom in this park adjacent to the Oakville Yacht Squadron. He was patrolling all day, stopping periodically to nectar. I was speaking with some people about his behaviour when all of a sudden a female Monarch came up. He chased her and pinned her down on the lawn next to the washrooms and they copulated for a few minutes. Then he flew away with her to where I took the photograph. As I was writing this report, they have since flown to another location out of my viewing range. Current conditions are sunny and 22°C, wind SE at 8 km/h with gusts up to 16 km/h, barometric pressure 102 kPa and falling, humidity 55%
Super exciting!

Oakville, ON

Latitude: 43.4 Longitude: -79.7

Observed by: Laura
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