Monarch season is over. The last straggler I spotted in my yard was December 20, 2021, just before the first arctic blast that welcomed in 2022. I started tagging Monarchs in my urban yard in 1997. That year, in the month of October my daughters and I tagged 75 Monarchs. We have not seen numbers like this for a long time. I stopped tagging Monarchs in 2016 as there were so few Monarchs coming through my yard. We are on the western edge of the Monarch migration route and usually the main migration numbers pass east of us unless it is an unusual year weatherwise. But even so the numbers of Monarchs, I see has declined. Part of the reason may be the lack of habitat resources in urban yards. There are very few Monarch friendly yards around me and they are not connected. This year, however, we did tag about ten Monarchs in my yard during the month of September. Hopefully this may be the start of an upward trend! To learn more about Monarchs, check out this article I co-wrote for our local newspapers and the Permian Basin Master Gardeners.
