monarch migration continued...

Today is another one of those rainy, gray days so I didn't go outside with my coffee for my morning garden walk. In fact, I didn't even look out the windows in the backyard as I usually do because I needed to get in the office and prepare for a meeting. Around 1 p.m. I saw a hummingbird fly past the office window and remembered I needed to fill their feeders so I took a break and did so. In the garden I noticed quite a large number of monarchs flying around and then I looked at the pine tree in the garden and saw this...
I ran inside to grab the camera and found monarchs in all the evergreen trees.
I walked the perimeter of the yard and the trees all looked like this - small bunches of monarchs scattered over the whole tree.

Sometimes there were bigger groups of them making great photos.
There were many in the crabapple tree as well but not in groups - only singles here and there...
but most of them preferred the evergreen trees.



Some of them were harder to spot because they blended in with the hanging pinecones...
and many were flying in our gray skies.
The sun is peaking out as I am posting this and more are visiting the garden...
how I regret not going outside first thing this morning to see if there were masses in one tree like last week. This is the first time I have seen large bunches of migrating monarchs more than once. It usually is a one time, one day event - or else I am just missing them like I almost did today :)

Today, I am thankful that I remembered to feed the hummingbirds so that I was able to see this many monarchs visiting all at once a second time this season.