I’m in southern Indiana and have been noticing far more monarch butterflies this fall than I recall seeing in previous years. On September 27th I was at an old field with lots of goldenrod in bloom and I must have seen more than a hundred monarchs hanging around. Where I live on the edge of a small …

Seems that way to me too. SW Ohio

Same for me here in the mountains of NC - I’ve seen more monarchs, both caterpillars and adults, over the last few weeks this year than during the last four years combined.

You can go to the Monarch taxon page and confirm that with iNat’s data. Click on the History chart. It defaults to not showing the current year, so you have to drag it to the left a bit. When you do that, you can see that the peaks for the last six years have been pretty steady, between 9,000 and…

[image] larry216: You can go to the Monarch taxon page and confirm that with iNat’s data. To use iNat data to compare abundance trends, you really should adjust the data for sampling effort. The easiest proxy for that available on iNat is the total number of observations for a given month. Th…

I know that the number of observations on iNaturalist have been increasing every year, so I was thinking in terms of “adjusting for inflation”. (Amateur naturalist here, so I don’t always know the correct jargon to use.) [image] twainwright: The history plot does this for you, if you click on …

Man, I am glad the data backs this up because I was just going to come in with my anecdotal evidence as well from our yard. I kinda regret not being more thorough with documenting more that came through! Adding, I also saw a video on youtube, from the Rockies I think, that had a woman sitting on th…

I have been seeing less monarchs than usual here in Maine, USA. Maybe I just haven’t gone outside as much this year.

It’s gratifying to hear that both individual experiences and the data seem to support the notion that they are having a good year. Monarchs can certainly use some good news. I wonder what is driving it. Thank you for all of the responses!

Huge Midwest Monarch Populations in 2025?

Nature Talk

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Huge Midwest Monarch Populations in 2025?

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