My husband and I have taken part in the Monarch butterfly Monitoring project of the U. of Minnesota for several years now. Since we moved to the farm, we have dedicated about an acre to milkweed, which the Monarchs use as a host plant. This weekend we start monitoring by counting milkweed, listing wildflowers in bloom, counting milkweed aphids and beetles, and generally getting hot, messy and happy! We monitor from September until the migration ends, usually mid-November, and again in the spring, starting in late February or early March until May. The thrill of finding an instar or a pupa is wonderful, but then I am easily entertained. If anyone is interested in Monarchs, here is the website for the project: www.mlmp.org There are monitoring sites all the way from Canada to Mexico, and we are proud that our little farm is the only site between Dallas and Austin.
I like projects like this and participate in them every year. Hats off to you. This sort of work is very necessary and usually takes very little of a person's time.
We used to have a lot of Monarchs here. But during the last 15 to 20 years the number of milkweed plants has declined. I suppose due to the farmers spraying for weeds in the feilds. I have only seen one this whole summer.
We haven't been on the main Monarch path in years, we get a few but not like we have seen a little further west where my Mom used to live. I had several milkweed plants last year and a few caterpillars but this year the milkweed succumbed to a disease or the drought or something and all died. We might see the butterflies fly past but there will be no caterpillars for us this year
