From Washington Post, quotes Chip Taylor

[skates4marty]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

[Paul Cherubini]

I very recently visited southwest Texas in the border region just before the butterflies pass into Mexico. I didn't see hardly any evidence the butterflies were nutritionally stressed or water stressed.

Example: In the little town of Sonora, Texas on Oct. 4 there were many roosts totalling about 50,000 butterflies. But the butterflies virtually ignored nearby nectar or water sources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xUDgTOaIQM

At one flowering bush in Sonora I saw a few monarchs, but many more Painted Ladies even though the number of monarchs in the town vastly outnumbered the Painted Ladies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub-BdQbV4OE

In Del Rio, TX there were many roosts too like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4Gb1iWiTgQ

But as I drove around the residential neighborhoods surrounding the cluster sites at Del Rio I saw no monarchs nectaring from garden flowers or drinking from water sprinklers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTpbzu9B1G0

During the 90 mile drive from Del Rio to Sonora, TX I stopped at some roadside spots where I saw flowers and two of the three monarchs I captured feeding at the flowers had normal sized abdomens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO-b1JwDVUM
Only one monarch I saw had a skinny looking abdomen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H9yh5jAqpM

But it's normal for a small percentage of the migrating monarchs to have skinny abdomens in my ~15 years of experience in Texas.

[Mona Miller]

You wouldn't. We all know how you feel about scientists and scientific data.

[Paul Cherubini]

Here's another cluster spot I found in Del Rio, Texas on October 4. There was lots of open muddy ground in the vicinity of these clustering monarchs, but none of the butterflies displayed any interest in drinking moisture from the ground: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZebZQ3GJO54

In Sonora, TX at 1:10 pm Oct. 4 I netted some of the 10,000 monarchs clustered above Concho Street and photographed the abdomens of 10 of them:
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87 ... onora1.jpg
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87 ... onora2.jpg
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87 ... onora3.jpg
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87 ... onora4.jpg
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87 ... ora6-7.jpg
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87 ... ora8-9.jpg
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87 ... a10-11.jpg

The appearance of all of these abdomens looked normal and typical to me.

[Paul Cherubini]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/can-monarch-butterflies-make-it-through-texas/2011/10/07/gIQAEt8ySL_story.html

Yes, that was a really scary article; i.e.“They’re going to be encountering a thousand miles of hell as they go through a nearly waterless, flowerless, nectarless landscape,” said Chip Taylor.

But strangely there have been no follow up articles about whether or not the monarchs at the overwintering sites in Mexico this past winter were dying in abnormal numbers due to low lipid reserves. Nor any recent articles about the size and vigor of the monarchs in Texas that just returned from the overwintering sites in Mexico.

Here are the Journey North March 21, 2011 vs March 21, 2012 maps of monarch sightings that were made in Texas and surrounding states between March 1 - 21. As everyone can see, sightings in March 2012 have not only greatly outnumbered those reported in March 2011, but the presumed weak, lipid starved butterflies have made more northward progress as compared to last year on March 21.

[Mona Miller]

Really, I don't understand you. On some lists you complain that people are not doing enough and on other lists you say that nothing needs to be done that there isn't a problem, which is it.

This article mentions the drought:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 172210.htm

Perhaps the butterflies that didn't get counted in Mexico were those that starved to death due to the drought in Texas.