This is ancedotal but I feel like I’ve seen less in the past few years than I used to. The same with preying mantisis (manti?)
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We added Swamp Milkweed to our garden last year, and we had about 3 dozen caterpillars, however we did not witness any chrysalis hatching. We had one that got stuck and did not make it. We will try again this year!
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I can confirm that the eastern population is in decline, too. There are only a few places in Mexico left that they overwinter - many of the locations are on privately held land. While the landowners have been good about protecting the locations, limiting visitors and not widely sharing the precise coordinates, it is not the same as official protection.
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It’s not just Monarchs. . .
https://www.half-earthproject.org/the-insect-apocalypse-is-here/
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[extremely Jon Stewart in Half Baked voice]
You ever see a butterfly… on *shrooms*?
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My question is, how did the guy get the job counting butterflies? is it paid by the hour, by the butterfly, is it union? what degree do you need to count butterflies?
Well, my dad counted salmon in Alaska. It wasn’t great pay and in his case was “trapped” in a cabin several months out of the year during winter with now contact other than a radio… He worked for the State Departments Wildlife and Game Dept. He had a degree in forestry, and I know there is a degree with like wildlife management, so that may help.
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Nice site!
Milkweed, necessary food for monarch caterpillars, has a reputation as a weed. But there are a lot of beautiful varieties. If you plant varieties native to your area, they are pretty easy to grow. They provide food for both the caterpillar and butterfly states. Even if you only have room for a few plants, it can really help the butterflies. You can grow milkweed in pots too. So grow some and have a monarch pit stop right outside your window.
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hmm yes, I guess it is one big cooking pot after all.
The groundhogs (possibly deer; I believe they were groundhogs) chowed down on my 2017 milkweed, but this past summer, I had about a half-dozen plants going. I did spot some larvae, but no adults nor pupae. And that was late in the summer! I didn’t even notice them until September, by which time the flowers had mostly died off. I logged my results here. Around that time, I was seeing at least 1 adult monarch (or something very similar) just about every day (e.g. while running an errand, but not around home).
(One thing I noticed is that the milkweed flowers seem to attract a lot of aphids, but I had not noticed that they affected anything else in my yard – not that there’s much else to bother.)
I’ve heard that buttonbush will attract all sorts of pollinators. And speaking of pollinators:
- Honeybees (at least where I live in MD) obtain most of their food from flowering trees, not so much flowering plants. (I have noticed that I get more bumblebees around my plants.) But…
- Early in the season, they feed off clover. Clover has been anti-marketed as a weed, because no one could make lawn fertilizer that did not kill clover. So someone invented the idea that clover must be a weed, since fertilizer kills it.
- Sunflowers will attract bees, and when they’re done with them, birds will go after the seeds.
Source: Someone giving a talk at work about bees
I also had a rue plant that wasn’t much good for anything else (I thought my wife could use it as an herb – wrong rue?), but it did attract black swallowtail larvae. Apparently, whatever is in the rue stem that’s a skin irritant also makes the larvae unpleasant to predators.
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On the plus side, Ontario farmers are no longer required to remove all milkweed from their property as a noxious weed.
eta: My general impression was that there were more Monarchs last summer.
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Clover will fix nitrogen in the soil, reducing the need for fertilizer. I’m sure that would have nothing to do with inventing that idea. 
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Hmmm. Maybe this year add in some late blooming nectar sources? Monarch butterflies will eat any nectar bearing flower, so maybe they’d stick around for you to see. I’d have to research deer resistant nectar sources. Unless you live in Texas, in which case lantana would be a good choice.
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Balls! You’re right, but now I wonder if it was dandelion that they were talking about. Or I’m conflating/confusing it with the signs I’ve seen to leave dandelions alone.
Last trip to the supermarket, I saw bunches of dandelion roots in the salad section. (I didn’t think to check the price.) If no one is using pesticides on lawns now, it might be safer to eat them than romaine lettuce.
That might be a niche for entrepreneurs: “Harvest remove your weeds for free?”
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Hey Texas readers:
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If you are in Texas-ish, and if milkweed is not an option for whatever reason, and you just can’t plant it or grow it, “Havana Snakeroot” or “White Mistflower” Ageratina havanensis is fantastic for pollinators, including monarch adults–yes, the butterflies. I have had luck planting it with the blessings of my POA (yippee!).
https://www.wildflower.org/gallery/result.php?id_image=31369
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