Its monarch time again on the west coast. This is the beginning of the monarch migration. Now, on the west coast, the monarchs are starting to collect by the thousands in weather protected groves from Mexico all the way up to the San Francisco area.
I stopped by a local monarch grove (Pismo state park) about a week ago and the count was at 7600. A good start and enough to think about going there to get that perfect Monarch Butterfly picture.
They have docents there as well as a trailer where you can buy lots of things you don’t need. Additionally they have a short class on monarchs a couple times a day.
If you’re in the area it’s definitely worth a stop (plan 1hr or more if you have a camera with you).
Here’s a map to the Pismo location
http://hutsonphotography.com/map/butterflys.jsp
The monarchs are my version of the fall colors (since the closest good fall colors are a more than 6 hours away). I always enjoy going to both the Pismo site and the Goleta site (also on the map) and always come back with at least one decent shot.
Just an interesting side note I saw an article at Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061120060308.htm) that seems to indicate that the reduction of monarch populations at the migration sites is possibly due to reduced food sources. They did studies and areas where they restored forests there was an increase in monarchs at the migration sites.