Friends of Patuxent

10/14/2026

10/05/2026

Thanks for being a top engager and making it on to my weekly engagement list! 🎉 Christina Juliette Nelson, Stephanie Kaufman

10/05/2026

Winter lore

09/27/2026

BREAKING: Duck with unusually long tail wins national beauty contest.

In other news, Robert (Bob) Hautman of Minnesota, has won the 2026 Federal Duck Stamp Contest!

Congratulations to Bob, whose stunning long-tailed duck painting will grace the next Federal Duck Stamp. A big round of applause to all the talented artists who entered this year's contest. Check out the second and third place winners in the comments below.

And while this duck may be the champion, the real winners are wetlands and wildlife. Thanks to hunters and other Duck Stamp buyers, stamp sales help protect and restore vital habitat for waterfowl and countless other species.

Painting by © Robert Hautman

09/26/2026

Now is the time

09/26/2026

**Big Migration Night**

The birds have to be loving this! The Nor'easter to the east and the high pressure to the north is creating the perfect bird highway. For the second night in a row, more than a half billion birds were in flight across the country. The next two nights are expected to bring even better conditions especially locally. Many birders have been reporting seeing different warblers in the past week. The next several days will continue to bring new viewing opportunities. You can help by turning off those outdoor lights. Migrating birds can get confused by light pollution.

09/26/2026

Follow the monarch fall migration through the Project Monarch Science app!

This week's cooler weather and northerly winds brought lots of migratory monarchs through our area of Lawrence, Kansas. In addition to tagging some of these monarchs, we also deployed a few more radio-tagged monarch butterflies.

These butterflies can be followed in near-real time through the Project Monarch Science app, which is free to download. Tracking these butterflies' journeys helps us understand the fall migration in new ways, and we're excited to see what we'll be able to observe this season!
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The Project Monarch Science app is connected with the initiative led by Cellular Tracking Technologies and Cape May Point Arts and Science Center to deploy radio-tagged monarchs and study their movement in new ways. Monarch Watch has continued participating in this collaboration and contributes radio-tagging data from our research projects to the collaborative for use in larger-scale data analyses.

09/26/2026

We've received our first reports of monarchs roosting in Texas and Oklahoma this year!

In recent weeks, we've received many roost reports from Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, and the latest roost map shows monarchs have moved one step closer to their overwintering sites in Mexico, though they still have plenty of distance to cover. From the location of our first roost reports in Texas, monarchs must still travel over 1,000 miles to reach the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

Monarchs typically begin reaching their overwintering habitat in Mexico around the end of October or the beginning of November.