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Cape May Point State Park
Cape May, New Jersey
10-10-14

"The annual migration of North America’s monarch butterfly is a unique and amazing phenomenon. The monarch is the only butterfly known to make a two-way migration as birds do."

Just as it is for migrating birds, the Jersey shore is along a major flyway and provides important habitat for migrating monarchs . The geography of the Cape May Peninsula contributes to this: "Monarchs traveling south congregate on peninsulas. The shape of the peninsula funnels the migrating butterflies. At its tip, the monarchs find the shortest distance across open water. They congregate along the shore to wait for a gentle breeze to help them across."

Seaside Goldenrod "The flowers are an important food/energy source for fall migrating monarch butterflies traveling the Atlantic coastal flyway."

Here are the links for the Cape May Bird Observatory Monarch Monitoring Project (MMP): homepage (On November 1, 2015 Mark Garland became the new director of the MMP) and blog

Here is a dorsal view of a monarch from my January 2015 post on the same subject:

In 2013 (October 6-12), I traveled to southern New Jersey for "Cape May Magic" an American Birding Association workshop conducted by Mark Garland and Pat & Clay Sutton . It was a wonderful week of birding and learning about birds, although it was rainy and very windy. The storm, a nor'easter (a cyclonic storm that moves along the east coast of North America. It’s called “nor’easter” because the winds over coastal areas blow from a northeasterly direction) , lasted most of the week. As a result, the conditions were generally very challenging for bird photography. Despite the weather, I enjoyed it so much that I spent another five days there in mid-October 2014. Due to its location at the end of a peninsula bordered by Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, Cape May , New Jersey is a migrant trap and one of the top birding destinations in North America.
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