On my walk up Mt Pleasant Rd just now, I greatly enjoyed a sizable movement of Monarch butterflies. I counted 20 in about an hour, which might not seem a lot but it’s more than I have seen on Mt Pleasant for years. Often they seemed to appear in small groups, as if they had just taken flight from the numerous clumps of goldenrod and aster in the fields and along the road. Others, though, I noted flying up high, helped on their way south by the NW breeze. During the same walk I witnessed a behavior I hadn’t seen before: a small flock of starlings fly-catching from a high dead tree, just like waxwings do. It occurred during a period of sunshine, which presumably had stimulated an upward flight of insects. (Didn’t see them chasing Monarchs, though.) The starlings swooped around high in the sky, sometimes hovering, then flying back to the tree to repeat. Once the clouds came over the starlings left. Ah…nature! Marie
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