[Naturens] Hummers and Monarchs

During the last week we have had a frost (-3 C here), a tropical storm (70 mm rain), and a transition to Autumn. However, today we saw a hummingbird at our feeder as we have every day recently. It may be a transient. A week ago today, I made a routine count of Monarchs in our field of milkweed and saw 39, two days later there were 21 using the same technique, and then we had two nights with frost. On the 21st I could only find one Monarch in the field. Today I saw two. The Monarchs have been heading south for the last month but the ones that emerged later were still here. Now they are gone. I hope you have seen some of them during their flight south. The frost has killed off all the milkweed plants but we still found one caterpillar attached to a dead plant laying in the field. So far this year we have rescued almost 200 Monarchs in the field and released them when they became butterflies. Over the last month the count of Monarch butterflies in the field has varied between 20 and 60. In a preliminary report at http://valleynature.ca there is a graph of my counts this year. This has been a good year for Monarchs here but not the best. Regards, Larry -- ----------- Larry Bogan Brooklyn Corner, Nova Scotia larry(a)bogan.ca