Parks Canada: National Parks and National Historic Sites

The park’s marsh boardwalk is a prime route for people who want a close-up look at the frogs, turtles and other animals in this small but incredibly biodiverse swath of habitat.

Photo: Tobi Asmoucha

STAFF AT POINT PELEE NATIONAL PARK update butterfly sightings daily with voice messages throughout the fall migratory season. In late August last year, the official numbers were 1,000 for two days running — not great when they can easily be in the hundreds of thousands. I waited. The monarchs, it seemed, were running late. I postponed my trip. I waited some more. Finally, after an unseasonably hot start to September, the mercury began to dip at night while daytime temperatures remained warm: ideal conditions for spotting early-morning monarch clusters.

Beneath a mesh dome, caterpillars cocoon in various stages of metamorphosis. Monarchs go through four stages of development from egg to adult. Females lay 100 to 500 microscopic football-shaped eggs on milkweed leaves. Eggs hatch after three or four days and the emerging caterpillar begins its two-weeklong binge by eating its own egg shell. After its initial meal, it will consume milkweed and grow 3,000 times its birth size to roughly the length of a man’s pinky. As it grows, it sheds its skin in five stages, or instars, before entering its pupal stage and forming a chrysalis.

A gecko-green chrysalis with shimmering golden seams hangs beside a black chrysalis in the park’s live display. This is the one to watch, apparently. Closer examination reveals that the chrysalis is actually transparent; the black comes from the wings of the immature monarch showing through. The process from chrysalis formation to monarch birthday takes 12 to 14 days. The two darkest pods have been cooking for almost two weeks already. They could crack open along their seams at any moment, Clarke tells me. Fascinating, but I am eager to catch the open-air shuttle to the tip of Point Pelee before the sun warms a million wings and I miss my chance to spot the motherlode.

“Oh, look!” my partner Kim exclaims on the short hike back from tip to shuttle after not a single sighting of the elusive Danaus plexippus.

“I think it’s a snapping turtle,” she says serenely, pointing directly in front of me. I squint at a nondescript line where beach meets forest floor and see nothing. “It’s right there,” she patiently insists after I scan futilely for several moments. Eventually, I make out a silver dollar-sized black turtle hatchling in the sand and begin to wonder if Kim has unnatural wildlife spotting powers. She does. Over the course of the next two days, she points out an alarming array of fauna, including a praying mantis along the DeLaurier Homestead trail, a 60- centimetre-long Lake Erie water snake intent upon eating a frog, a pumpernickel-sized map turtle sunning itself in a marsh where cattails rustle like wheat in the field, and a juvenile bald eagle riding the air currents high above the same wetland.

Other wildlife encounters are more obvious, such as swarms of migrating dragonflies. That dragonflies migrate is news to me. One species, known as the black saddlebag, bears a striking resemblance to flying miniature Harley-Davidsons. There are also 12-spotted skimmer and green darner dragonflies galore, all of them heading south across the lake. Migrating sharp-shin hawks dart distinctively by the dozens high above. They are also hard to miss, as are their prey.

A flock of blue jays screams by, swooping out over the lake, then retreats back to the relative safety of the point. They are nervous, Clarke says. With the hawks ready to pick them off and no tree cover to dart into, they are flummoxed by the vast expanse of water. We watch as they circle out again on another brief foray before flowing back. Eventually, one will lead them over the lake, but not this morning. The jays continue their nervous circling and squawking amid the hawks. Conflicted instincts make for high anxiety in the troposphere.