scatter with z dimension color express dates just in months

I have this code:

figure()
pointsize = 30;
scatter(x,y, pointsize, date,'filled');
set(gca,'yscale','log')
xlabel('x');
ylabel('y');
grid on;


colorbar

The z axis is date in the typical format MATLAB likes (a 5 digit number) Instead of showing dates on the colorbar like 43500, how do I show just the tic marks for the month?

I tried this which seems to work, but how do I just show the month? not the days and year?

c=colorbar('SouthOutside');  % Note you can change position 
c.TickLabels = datestr(c.Ticks); 

This also seems to get the year wrong. But I just want the month.

edit: Ok this is working, but I have several tics for each month. How do I reduce number of tics?

formatOut = 'mmmm';

c=colorbar('SouthOutside');  % Note you can change position 
c.TickLabels = datestr(c.Ticks,formatOut); 

[dpb]

W/O data to try to match what you're doing it's pretty-much impossible to be able to do anything specific...attach a sample test case that illustrates the issue that folks can piddle with without having to try to reproduce your work on their own...