The butterfly count is up in CA!
Wowza!~
Ping
Stoopid climate kerfuffleage.
If its down, its climate change.
If its up, its climate change.
If its the same, Trump is a Russian agent.
So the big question is, why do my hydrangeas do well some years, and not others. I think these people don't understand that weather CHANGES. which changes other environmental things, it's weather.
This area in Pacifc Grove a good bit of the year you would never know it was a huge Monarch haven.
Makes sense.
People drove less during the pandemic last year and this year, so less butterflies wound up in car grilles and radiators................
Any decent ecologist, as opposed to green weenies, will tell you that naturally occurring fluctuations in populations of species is the rule, not the exception. There really is no need to “explain” an event which is just normal business as usual for the monarch butterfly.
Looking forward to growing my group this summer again. I know what to look for and will have the time to do so since I retire in April !!!!! going to plant a lot of early flowers to attract / feed them along with my milkweed, beabalm, coneflowers etc.
More CO2. More butterflies.
I think I see a connection.
It is such an amazing sight to see! So glad they are back. I’ve seen them in previous years over at Ardenwood and in Pacific Grove.
Article says “The monarchs decide where they want to go and where they get their needs met. So if it was too dry here, if we didn’t have enough nectar sources, if we didn’t have the wind protection that they needed, they would decide to go elsewhere.”
How would they do that? Do they send out scouts to reconnoiter where the good places are? How would they get back to the main body of butterflies headed south? How would they communicate?
I understand that one generation of Monarchs does not make a complete round trip. Succeeding generations “know” by instinct where to go for their winter grounds. But if that is true, then wouldn’t the butterflies always go to the same destination? How in the world can a new generation headed south know that their instinctual destination is poor on food or inhospitable and head somewhere else?
Nature is amazing.
Best friend's wife is one of those Monarch watchers and last year was a banner year for the number of butterflies that laid their eggs in her small back yard. I think she harvested over 75 eggs and raised them to adults in the butterfly cages I built for her. This year was the same.
A bad year was the year before last when she saw very little Monarchs in her yard and it was all doom and gloom about the Monarch population dying away....
Until the scientists can communicate directly with the butterflies and find out what is going on, it's going to be a continuous cycle of numbers up and numbers down..........
In Westlake Village, Calif (about 30+ miles north of Los Angeles) where I used to work, I saw several years ago for months on end monarch butterflies flying by.
There sure were more then 100,000 of them.
A few decades ago I was in a park and had monarch butterflies flying by the thousands just above the grass for the hours I was there.
Thx for the ping! This is good news to me! I had my best summer of monarchs for the few years I’ve been working on this. It’s gratifying to hear that I was able to do my part in some small way.