Aug 26th - It's One Of Ours!

This afternoon Terry read a posting on the facebook page 'Monarchs Migrating Through Ontario' asking about a tagged Monarch butterfly that had been observed and photographed on the Toronto Islands.  When he clicked on the photo and read the tag number he saw that it was one of ours from Rosetta 'WBA 550'.  This was a Monarch that Betty had tagged and released early yesterday morning.  They're on the move!

I'd like to thank Jackie R. for allowing me to use her photo on the blog.

'WBA 550' visiting the butterfly garden on the Toronto Islands (Jackie R)

Early this morning Bruce observed a Purple Martin flying with a group of swallows.  This is always a great bird for our Fall Species List.  Sadly, it's not the 'common' bird it once was in this area of the Bluffs.  Even I can remember seeing these beautiful birds in numbers when I was much younger in the park at the foot of Midland Avenue.

Back to butterflies for a moment.  Today in the main gardens around the fountain we observed 2 great species that I will add to our Fall Species List, numbers 23 and 24 since the beginning of the month.  They were the very beautiful Common Buckeye and the very elegant Spicebush Swallowtail butterflies.  Also of note today was a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth that one of the photographers got pictures of.

Common Buckeye (Walter)

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth (Ed)

As far as raptors go, we saw nothing today!!!  Yesterday I had an American Kestrel fly over the center of the park heading west.  A local Red-tail and a local Vulture both made a number of fly-overs today.

Enjoy your weekend,
Walter