Good News on Butterflies and Kev's Brushpile

If you click and enlarge, you'll see a bunch of sparrows who are loving the brushpile. And I like it, too, since I'm lazy and can just throw the odd branch that falls off my silver maples into the pile.

Monarchs on the march in March in Mexico.

Millions of monarch butterflies settled in Mexico for the winter this year. Forming a 10-acre carpet of black-and-orange striped winged insects in their wintering grounds, this year's migration represents a significant uptick in numbers for the majestic butterflies.

Because the monarch butterflies cluster on trees by the thousand, lepidopterists keep count of the insects by the area they cover. This winter saw a the butterflies blanket an area more than 3.5 times greater than the previous season, which saw 2.8 acres of butterflies. This is also up from the record low of 1.66 acres in 2013. 

I have a pretty good size patch of milkweed (Asclepias, for you Latins) planted now and am going to add another in the Spring.