It's been an anxious time for me waiting out the storm and worrying how my property would fare. Over the past several days we heard many senerios about where the eye of the storm would hit. Each time the forecaster would change the projections slightly. The one thing I did get out of the reports was that if you were south and east of storm you would have more high winds whereas if you were north and west of the storm you would experience higher tides and tidal surges. That's exactly what happened. The eye of Hurricane Sandy came in just around Atlantic City on 10/29 about 7PM. Because it met up with upper level air it then became classified as a NorEaster. Damages from Atlantic City up through Conneticut were beyond extensive. The damage to NYC plus some of the cities in the upper 1/3 of NJ along the coast will never be the same. It's hard to believe all of the destruction with homes being moved off their foundations, other houses and business flooded by the water, roads and cars buried under several feet of sand, the Altantic Ocean meeting the bays and so much more it's is hard to process. As one reporter said it looks like a war zone. I think we are so lucky in Cape May County because we had some damages but nothing like the mid to upper part of the state. Personally, I had very little damage. The beach along the Dealware Bay where I live lost 3-10 foot of the dunes.
One thing I learned last year after Hurricane Irene was the hurricanes bring rare birds to the area and that a good place to look for those birds is in Cape May Point at Diamond Beach. So after I checked out my house and property I headed over to Cape May Point to join any other birders who might be hanging out there. Well, due to all of the damage in Cape May and in West Cape May all access was blocked to the Point. So I headed back towards home. While on New England Avenue I passed a field that was flooded There were about 18 Yellow Legs along with 2 dozen Mallards in the area.
When I got home I was surprised to find a Monarch Chrysalis hanging off the back steps. It had to have been there before the hurricane came through so with all those winds we had it's amazing that it was still intact.
For about the past 2 weeks Roger & Judy H have been tagging Monarch Butterflies in our yard. Today there was a definite increase in Monarchs. While I was outside getting pictures f the butterflies Roger stopped by. He was able to tag 25 Monarchs in a very short period of time ~ about one every 2-3 minutes. Then he was out of tags for this year. So total tagged here in the yard was 49 Monarch butterflies. Today was the highest number for this year with 32 monarchs counted. We still have some caterpillars on both Tropical and Swamp milkweed. I counted 20 chrysalis that I could see and I am sure there are lots more hidden in the gardens. We also have been having Monarchs enclose almost every day now. Time for them to move south to Mexico for the winter.
Over the past week I have had quite a number of Monarch caterpillars and chrysalis in the yard. I found a set of chrysalis on the back of a canna leaf which seemed to be an unusual place for them to pupate. Then, yesterday, a friend found a butterfly that had enclosed from the chrysalis but the butterfly never got his wings pumped up. We don't know if that's because it was raining when the butterfly enclosed or because there was another problem. In any case, the butterfly looked more
After a very slow start the Monarch activity in my yard is picking up. I have mating Monarchs almost daily plus small and large caterpillars on my milkweed. I have chrysalis at the edge of my house and 3 in one of my Verbena bonariensis. Today, I had a Monarch emerge from the chrysalis. I missed the actual process but saw the Monarch drying her wings while hanging there. It is so cool.
