Natural History Wanderings

Bay Nature reports

The Xerces Society reported 335,479 Western monarch butterflies tallied in the annual Thanksgiving count. True, they were battered by the storms that came after, but the count is evidence the monarchs have continued to rebound since their troubling near-disappearance in 2020. “Monarchs here recovered from a near-death experience,” says butterfly expert Stu Weiss, who monitors monarchs and designs habitat for them. They’ve giving us a second chance, is how he sees it.