Milbert's Tortoiseshell, Aglais milberti , "In Decline? Why?"

Nature Talk
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I’ve never seen that many of them, but they are a fairly common butterfly in northern Pennsylvania. I saw several last year and some the year before, but despite looking, I don’t think I saw any this year. There was a lot of flooding late last summer, and I wondered if that had reduced the population this year, but I was surprised to not see one. I can’t speak to a larger decline though. Frankly it wasn’t a very good year for butterflies overall back home–numbers seemed down.