Abilene, Texas area has LOTS of Monarchs

[texas butterfly]

Just came back from a trip to the Abilene area.

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Just West of Abilene has lots of sunflowers and yellow daisies growing along the sides of farms and country roads. Fisher and Jones County.
Saturday, October 3rd, with the sun out and warm but mild temps there were lots of Monarch feeding on the yellow flowers.

It was an awesome sight.

My dad thinks that we saw at least 100 Monarchs. Also saw some Queens among them. I found and photographed a pair of mating Queens.

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Also, today - Sunday, October 4th.

LOTS of Monarchs spotted at Abilene State Park.

There seemed to be Monarchs everywhere. Check the nature trails, this is where I saw dozens of Monarchs flying around.

Back in the day picnic area where there are pecan trees, and nice habitat around a little pond or creek,. This location this is located across from the Meadow Garden area, which to me when I read the description it sounds like a butterfly garden. Has everything except Milkweeds.
Tah Duh..... Drum Rollllll.........

Probably as many as 1,000 ROOSTING in the Pecan trees which also had loads of pecans on them.
I believe they were also in a Juniper trees and maybe a Mimosa tree. I'll have to review photos and confirm what trees. But, several Pecan trees had nice clusters of 60 or so Monarchs on multiple branches.

Also a good thing to spot where these Monarchs were found are the large cement items that look like giant benches. Best viewing was actually over to the first picnic table area found when coming into day picnic area. Look over the pond to the trees. You may need binoculars for best viewing.

This was my first experience finding migrating Monarchs and finding a nice ROOST site.

Currently it is cloudy and raining in the Abilene area. Locals report that this is a WET season. Which is surprising since all I've been hearing was how bad the drought is. Possibly all the nice rain has produced a very pretty site of the sunflowers and daises in this part of Texas.

Also noted on drive back to Houston have many fields and how many places on the side of the road also had beautiful yellow flowers. It seemed every couple of miles there were beautiful fields of the beautiful yellow flowers. The yellow flowers appeared to be sunflowers and daises.

On this trip did not find any milkweed.

[summerluver]

Did you take any pictures....it sounds awesome!

[texas butterfly]

Here's link to some of the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39431349@N ... 4437/show/