Monarchs
Created | Updated Dec 4, 2008
The sun had not long risen and a cool, blustering wind blew off the land, but on the Boardwalk, in the lee of the Beaches, walking was comfortable. Clear skies gave the promise of a fine day. Few people
were about and a flock of five migrating Dunlin probed along the shoreline of Lake Ontario, undisturbed by free-running dogs.
For a while, nothing else caught my eye until I noticed that a migration of another sort was taking place. It was about 9am and at any one time I could see five or six Monarch butterflies heading west along the shore in that erratic flight so typical of the Lepidoptera. I stopped several times to count them and found that eight to ten were passing by me every minute at a height of between 1 and 3 metres above
the sand. Weather-wise and conscious of saving energy, they had chosen the lee of the lakeshore where they could make headway under the turbulence that boiled off the land.
The great migration of raptors had also begun,
but there would be no gyring in the high thermals for frail Papillion. Bent to the same direction, his erratic fluttering and purposeful glides made his westing a lot harder.
It was noon before I made the return journey along the Boardwalk, and by then it was crowded, people taking the sun, and many dressed in light gear despite the cool air, wistful for the days of
summer. 'Few tourists now.' I thought and suddenly the people vanished, as again, I became aware of the migration of the butterflies.
The warmth had brought both people and Monarchs out in large numbers, and my butterfly count was soon up to about 20 per minute, which was about 1200 per hour; with this peak lasting perhaps for four hours would factor out at roughly 10,000 per day or 70,000 per
week. Conditions were ripe for an accurate count and I suspected, that given an offshore wind, there could be no better place in the Toronto area for such a count to take place.
The exodus continued, the butterflies flaunting their tickets in the face of the unseeing crowd, ecstatic vacationers on their way to a winter in Mexico.
