I was a little kid back in the 70s. I remember my mom got me a butterfly net as a present when I was around five. It was so easy to go outside and immediately catch a monarch butterfly.
There was were meadows near my house in Minnesota filled with milkweed plants. It was impossible to turn over a leaf of one of these plants without finding a little striped monarch caterpillar munching away at a leaf. I would often catch one, put it into a jar, and a few days later it would transform into a butterfly.
When my daughter was a young girl in the 2000s, I took her to a meadow hoping to find some monarch caterpillars so she could witness the same wonder. I swear, now it's almost impossible to find those! I've turned over many leafs without finding a single one. Finally I went ordered a caterpillar online from some science shop.
Occassionally, I'll see a monarch butterfly here or there, but I remember back in the 70s, it was almost impossible to step outside without immediately seeing one.
Has any one else noticed this change?
#1 reason for this is that people have been poisoning their yards for decades and stupidly classify dandelions as "weeds."
In rural areas, anywhere there are flowers the pollinators will come. Even clover is enough to draw them. I can't go barefoot in summer without stepping on bees.
Yeah lots of people hate dandelions but I have always liked them. They are the first burst of color in the spring.
I love Dandelions, their color is so bright, too bad everyone in my neighborhood (except us), has lawn service, so the crap they spray gets on my lawn too, and not many Dandelions anymore.
We have to be careful to collect them where the dogs don't go.....but, I eat the leaves and blossoms in salad and the roots taste a bit like carrots. Mrs. bigsix like dandelion tea made from the blossoms. They are very good for you.
I have dandelion root tea. Nature provides a cleansing plant right away to start spring! Funny, huh? Almost like God crafted things. 😊
Which is why you get them out of your yard. They are weeds, and can cause a lot of issues. I have plenty of butterflies, cicadas, wrens, crow, squirrels, rabbits, the occasional hawk i have to shoo off, and an owl i have to hunt down so he will stop trying to kill the neighborhood cats and chickens neighbors are keeping. Mind you, i live in a pretty busy area.
Nothing wrong with harvesting and collecting for nutritional and medicinal purposes. Its just like fire ants; if you don't stay on top of it, you're going to be miserable. And I don't use glyphosate; just vinegar and salt in some warm water.
Any examples of the myriad issues dandelions have caused you?
Yes. A few years ago, I had lots of butterflies( Monarchs) in my garden, and an occasional swallowtail. I did not see any this past year or two. Also, very few bees. 10 years ago, they would swarm all over my herb garden, now there are practically none.
I'm still wondering about what happened to the cicadas that were supposed to emerge last summer?
Chem trails & 5G. Bee population is also down.
I've had so many intact bees just dead on the ground. Never, ever had I seen that before,
Unfortunately sad fact but true. They attack us by attacking our pollinators which results in less fruit and vegetables.
Yes! I've found two barely-alive bumble bees hanging out on the driveway in the last 2 days. Neither one made it despite trying to nurse them back to health with flowers and sugar water. We had lots of butterflies pollinating the garden last year. I'll have to notice if the numbers are down once our weather warms up.
DEF fluid used in diesel trucks once burned makes it harder for bees to fly.
Caterpillar Engines made one of the best almost indestructible diesel engines for heavy haul semi trucks. If it was yellow ( Caterpillar engine color ) you were good.
Caterpillar engines tried making the EPA happy by going the twin turbo route instead of using ( diesel exhaust fluid ) DEF.
Needless to say, Caterpillar engines are now strictly off road heavy equipment and generator sets.
Eventually some of these big engines might someday be powered by hydrogen fuel extracted from natural gas. The bi product from burning hydrogen = water vapor, the way Our Creator intended.
Do you have a source for that? I would love to look into it.
We had virtually none. However, in other cities, they were so loud some people couldn't even talk on the phone. I wondered if it had to do with chemicals sprayed for mosquitos. I live next to a small creek in town.
They did. They were extremely loud and there were carcasses all over the place. May have not in some areas but in the southeast they did. They would be so loud in a valley that it sounded like a horror movie.
I had lots of them in my yard last year. (eastern washington state)
My brother noticed a decline about 10 years ago & started his own hives to make sure his garden & fruit trees were pollinated. He is amazed more people don't do it. I am considering doing it myself if the guys who sells artisan honey stops brining his hives up each year.
That's a great idea. The bees are a goldmine for the honey, and the pollination. I've often thought of that but I live in town. I planted as much as I can to be self sufficient if I had to be. I have a friend who has bees that I get my honey from. I used to watch " JP the Beeman" on you tube. He would extract honey bees from homes and other places. He is very gentle, and he has the heart of a teacher. He explains everything and you really learn a lot. I felt like I was ready to get some bees after binging on his videos!
They only lay their eggs on milkweed....monarch catapillars eat the leaves they hatch on
You're right. I have milkweed, and my neighbor's both have planted milkweed. It's not that.
The way I understand it is monarchs winter in Mex pines...then they head north to migrate they reproduce on the way..it's the third hatching that gets here...then the butterflies that hatch at end of summer fly all the way back
Yes, it is very strange. They always know to fly down to Acapulco and then fly back. But it's only the last hatching of the season that does that. It's one of the miracles of nature.
Remember driving in the Country and the front of your car and windshield was splattered in dead bugs. monsanto glyphosate first used in 1974.
It was love bugs for us. Had to keep a can of coke in the car. Not anymore
Man made
Birds, too, are fewer in number and variety.
I've definitely noticed that in the last few years. We had so many song birds, some of which only sang in the evening. And several that would be audible in the very early morning. Now it's mostly Blackbirds and Robins, and the very occasional Cardinal.
Bee's are being diminished, affecting our food supply.
Fireflies? Wher’d they go. JJ gray has a good song called where did all the fireflies go?
Where I live, if I go out walking at twilight, there must be hundreds of thousands of fireflies through the city. For me the question is where do they go during the day? How can so many bugs be hidden unseen. And that’s just fireflies
yes now that you mention it.......
Not just butterflies, but honey bees and also fireflies.
Before everyone weeded out the dandelions we’d have tons of honey bees. And we’d see fireflies all over at dusk.
What about dragon flies also. Seems like I saw a lot more of them as a kid.
Yes, most likely, but you need to live near a water source I believe to see these.
And praying mantis.
oh yea, grasshoppers also.
I can't really say which kind they were, but I used to see butterflies all the time in the eighties and now that you mention it I don't see them any more. Same corner in the same town the whole time and no big changes in anything for miles around.
People need to stop spraying their weeds with poisonous crap from Bayer etc. Vinegar and salt will kill any weed or grass. Better still, educate yourself on the 'weeds' in your garden and you'll be surprised just how many can be used in herbal medicine.
When you have to buy bugs and butterflies from Amazon, you know something's wrong with the environment.
...welcome to the "Brave New World"...
Now that you mention it... I almost never see any butterflies.
Plant milkweed... monarchs need it! If you poke around online, you probably have some org near you that will set you up with some for free or very low cost.
Sowing a mix of "pollinator seeds" is always a good idea, too.
Sorry all, They are usually hanging out at my wife's butterfly garden in the back yard. We are outside of a small town in the south and that probably helps.
All the insects are dying off.
Summers used to be total carnage on my motorbike visor, now there's hardly a single bug splat.
And in the last 10 years or so fireflies. My lawn would light up in the summer like Times Square. Ive seen ver few lately.
June bugs too. Havent seen one of those in a couple years.
Thjink the proliferation of atrazine in the products put down by lawn care services like True Green plays a part. Ive stopped using them and do my own now. Alex Jones was right, they are turning the frogs gay. Atrazine fucks with the endocrine system.
Yes definitely.
All of our pollinators are way down in numbers. They are being poisoned by chemicals. I live in a home surrounded by farm fields. In the past few years I haven't seen June bugs, crickets, box elder bugs, many butterflies and even the house fly and mosquito population is all buy wiped out. Whatever they are spraying us with cannot be good.
I don't know the answer, but I do know that I like you as a human being.
yep...last year i saw only a couple monarchs...I still see cabbage butterflies when I try and look for butterflies.
Sorry all, They are usually hanging out at my wife's butterfly garden in the back yard. We are outside of a small town in the south and that probably helps.
This. Same. There's no shortage of bugaloos or any other critters where I'm at.
Also, contextually.... it's Winter! Ain't no one observing butterflies right now unless you're south of the border.
There are no fireflies and the bees are almost gone too.
They are being decimated by the farm chemicals. They may be gone before soon.
Yes. Big time. MD.
Brought to you by MONSANTO, we have been killing the food web for 50 years.
This is yet another reason MAHA is so important:
All the poisons that are harming OUR health are also hurting the OTHER species on this Earth, and humans won't survive for long without them.
The "climate change" scam has taken minds and resources away from actual, existential problems including the fouling of our land, air, and water. Even in the remotest parts of the world, nano plastics and hundreds of chemicals have been detected. Imagine what things are like in America's farmland, where Glyphosate and a hundred other chemicals have been used heavily for decades now.
MAHA is even more important than most people think.
Mostly it has to do with the meadows you had. I recently started going more natural in my backyard, and the wildlife (which I spend a great deal on feeding ((story for another day)) ) has gone off the rails. Including butterflies. Nature will adapt and survive. People work so hard to create the picture perfect yard that they neglect what is supposed to be. I now have butterflies, dragonflies, as many as seven rabbits and nine squirrels at a time, a minimum of fifty doves, and as many blue jays, cedar waxwings and sparrows. It took me about two years to bring it back to what I believe it should have been all along. That is my vision for us and the rest of the world as well. Your butterflies are, for the moment, OK.
Edit: I live in a suburb just minutes from the city.
My wife plants a 30' long row of zinnias off our front porch every year here in Oklahoma and in the summer it looks like a butterfly sanctuary. The humming birds like them too. We also have an area off to the side of the house that becomes a "no mow zone" in the early spring where we get a huge bloom of native wildflowers every year. That area attracts a lot of butterflies and bees until mid-summer when the grasshopper take over and the zero turn reclaims it.
Funny, we have a spot along the fence line where tall morning glories and Lantana come back each year with very similar effect. We don't get the bees or grasshoppers, though. A number of different wasps, but no bees. I need to get in there soon and clear out the old to make room for the new. A pain in the butt, but we'll worth the effort.
grasshoppers eradicated as well.
I grow milk weed every summer...lots of monarchs here (Ohio)
No. We preserve our milkweed and get an excellent response from butterflies.
Took em a year to realize that the resource was going to be reliable.
Not just butterflies. OK all you old timers, when was the last time you drove at dusk with your lights on and had your windshield covered in bug guts?
I had no idea you could order a caterpillar online, but I guess it’s not surprising.
I rarely see butterflies in my yard, more in the park where there are bogs and walking trails and maybe less chemical usage.
My cucumbers didn’t flourish, but all the pollinators loved the flowers well into early fall last summer. I think my little plot was an oasis for them.
Indeed I have.
As to the why?
Pick your poison. There’s anyone of a few dozen potential reasons. Hell. Perhaps they’re all contributing factors
Many years ago I planted a bunch of milkweed plants in my backyard and every year I had more and more monarchs all over.
I moved out of the shithole that is Calif and where I'm at now, it is too cold for milkweed plants otherwise I would plant more here.
I live in north Wyoming and we have lots of milkweed. Butterflies, not so much.
I'll have to look into cold weather milkweed.
I did a quick look and the same ones I had in Calif will not work well where I am but there are other varieties that will work.
I plan on planting a butterfly garden in the spring.