Naturalist's Worksite News
2024 Monarch Butterfly Population Report - Brooklyn Street Field
Published on Oct 16, 2024
2024 was an average year for the Monarch population coming from out field milkweed. It was better that 2023, but not as good as the great years of 2021 and 22. We saw varying numbers in our 2 hectare field form the last days of May to mid-October. The peak number counted this year was 42 in mid-August. The season started at the very end of May [...] Read more
2023 Report of Monarch Butterflies - Nova Scotia
Published on Sep 17, 2023
The year 2023 had a slow start for Monarchs in Nova Scotia, probably due to the cool weather of the late spring and early summer. Very few Monarch had made it to province before mid-July. We saw the first Monarch in our field at Brooklyn Corner, Kings County on the 14th of July and found the first eggs layed the very next day. More Monarchs [...] Read more
2022 Monarch Report - Annapolis Valley
Published on Aug 17, 2022
2022 was a very good year for Monarch breeding in the Annapolis Valley. The following information is for just the Common milkweed field (2 ha) in Brooklyn Corner, N.S. Other people in the Annapolis Valley are also seeing good succcess in the number of Monarchs. A summary of the number of Monarch butterflies seen during this summer is: Over 100 [...] Read more
2021 Monarch Report - Annapolis Valley
Published on Jul 15, 2021
The first Monarch butterflies arrived in our field of milkweed in 2021 on the 6th of June. Not only were they early, there were three of them at the beginng. Soon more joined them and by the 18th we found our first egg in the field. There was a caterpillar on the 22nd of June. Counts of Monachs seen in the field were done semi-regularly. and as of [...] Read more
Video on Monarch Habitat - ' A Field for Monarchs'
Published on Dec 22, 2020
Jerry Lockett has created a fine video presentation of what Alison and I do for Monarchs in our 2 hectare field every year. It has some Monarch biology and descriptions of how to manage a field of Common Milkweed for good production of Monarch populations each year. Go to https://vimeo.com/448650247 The video is 13 minutes long. - Larry Bogan
2020 Summary of Monarch Surveys - Annapolis Valley
Published on Aug 3, 2020
In 2020 the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz occured from July 24 to August 2. This is not the end of the Monarch monitoring for 2020 but the results will give you an idea of the progress of the Monarch breeding this year. As of Auguat 3, I had monitored 20 sites in the Annapolis Valley and reported them to Mission-Monarch.org. I found [...] Read more
2019 Monarch Report - Annapolis Valley
Published on Sep 17, 2019
by Larry and Alison Bogan This year was an excellent year for the population of Monarchs although not as great as 2018 which was the best in our experience. Our 2 ha field is full of Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) and this year was sprouting by mid-May. It is a perennial and its roots over-winter. The damp spring helped growth and by the time [...] Read more
Destruction of a Pine Forest
Published on May 8, 2019
Over the winter 2018-19, one of the few remaining pine forests on the Annapolis Valley floor was clear cut of every tree standing. The image below shows how there is no forest left at all (click on the photo for a larger image). The area is shown in the aerial photo from Google Earth below before it was cut. The blue in the aerial images is the [...] Read more
2018 Report Monarch Butterflies, Brooklyn Corner, N.S.
Published on Sep 18, 2018
The first Monarch butterfly probably visited our milkweed field around June 12, 2018 and layed at least one egg. We found the caterpillar of that egg after we saw two Monarchs arrive on 3 July 2018. Within a week we had about 10 Monarchs resident in the field. After that collection of eggs and larvae begain and we established our feeding and [...] Read more
2017 Monarch Season Annapolis Valley
Published on Oct 9, 2017
Monarchs were first seen in Nova Scotia in mid-June and arrived in Brooklyn Corner late in the month. We had four in the milkweed field on the 3rd of July and collected our first eggs on the 4th. In the following months we raised 187 adult Monarchs from egg and larvae found in the field. We again tagged 50 of those butterflies hoping some make it [...] Read more
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