Where To See Fall Migration in Northeast Ohio This Season

Make way for the monarchs this season, and keep an eye out for plenty of other visitors passing through Northeast Ohio along with them.

Fall migration is underway across the region, bringing monarch butterflies, warblers, sparrows and even dragonflies over the next several weeks. Monarchs and dragonflies are heading into peak migration, with their numbers expected to taper off by late September, while migrating birds will continue passing through into mid- to late October.

Among the less obvious travelers are migratory bats, including eastern red, silver-haired and hoary bats.

Jake Kudrna, manager of the Watershed Stewardship Center at Cleveland Metroparks, says Northeast Ohio is particularly well positioned to welcome them. Cleveland’s location along Lake Erie, paired with pockets of green space along the shoreline, gives wildlife a place to rest and refuel during long seasonal journeys.

“They’re the first patch of green space that these birds, bats, dragonflies see when they’re coming over,” Kudrna says of lakefront areas including Wendy Park, East 55th Street Marina, Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve, Euclid Beach and Wildwood Park. “We call them these little migrant traps.”

For monarchs, Northeast Ohio is just one stop on a journey that stretches across much of the continent. 

Wendy Caldwell, executive director of Monarch Joint Venture, says the eastern monarch population extends as far north as southern Canada. Beginning around mid-August, monarchs in the northern reaches of that range start gathering in roosts and moving south, joining others along the way before eventually reaching their overwintering grounds in Mexico.

“Right now, I feel like we’re kind of experiencing that peak migration season in the upper Midwest part of the range,” Caldwell says.

That annual migration comes amid a long-term decline in monarch populations, driven by habitat loss, climate change, extreme weather and pesticide exposure. The eastern population that passes through Ohio did rebound this year — the count at its overwintering sites in Mexico was up 64% from the previous winter — but it remains well below historic levels. With fewer resources available across their range, access to the right plants becomes especially important — milkweed for the caterpillars, which eat nothing else, and late-blooming nectar flowers for the adults heading south.

“It’s not just the green space; it’s what those spaces are filled with,” Kudrna says.

And those spaces don’t have to be sprawling parks or protected natural areas. Caldwell says even small patches can make a difference because monarchs are constantly moving in search of what they need.

“They’re hopping from milkweed patch to milkweed patch,” Caldwell says. “The more dispersed habitat we have, the more often they’re going to encounter the right kinds of habitat.”

Northeast Ohioans can help fill those gaps at home. Kudrna recommends native fall bloomers such as goldenrod, New England aster and boneset, and despite the arrival of cooler weather, there’s still time to get them in the ground this season.

“Planting native plants is the simplest and quickest way to provide habitat and create a network of stopover areas for these butterflies as they migrate,” Kudrna says.

Residents can also turn off unnecessary outdoor lights during migration, make windows more visible to birds with bird-safe treatments and install rain gardens to reduce stormwater runoff that can degrade habitat downstream.

“Everything that we do can make a small impact,” Kudrna says. “And the more people that participate, the bigger the impact we have.”

Mornings and evenings offer some of the best chances to see monarchs clustering at the lakefront parks. Those sightings can also help track their journey.

With Journey North, residents can report monarch sightings and explore maps following their movement across the continent.

Every yard and vacant lot is one more link in a chain that runs from southern Canada to central Mexico. “We've got to have stuff that connects in between,” Kudrna says.

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