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When working in Iowa, and when she was getting her master’s degree in Delaware, Fischer was asked by friends, family and colleagues about monarchs every year. “Now, in Connecticut, the story is no different,” she said. “Every year, without a doubt, I get the question 'where are all the monarchs?'”

Fischer said she never judges how the monarch butterfly population size is doing based on summer observations. “Because the monarch migrates, the monarchs we see in CT are a direct result of earlier generations of monarchs in different parts of the country," she said. “Monarchs could be anywhere. Check out the

Journey North website. It looks like they’re distributing well.”

According to Fischer, if you study the migration patterns and the time needed to go from egg to adult, “the monarchs arrived in CT right when I expected to see them – in the middle of July – and I’ve been seeing adults, eggs, and larvae ever since.” In her opinion, “everything appears to be on track.”

And the focus, according to Fischer, should be how well the monarchs are doing overwintering in Mexico. The population is all together there, she said, and is measured consistently each year. “At this time, they are all in the same place huddled together and we can get a real, strong estimate of population size,” Fischer pointed out.

Overall, she said it’s hard to answer the question, “where are all the monarchs?”

“Insect populations fluctuate and what we see in CT may be completely different than what our friends in Iowa, Georgia, Florida, or Ohio, just a few examples, are seeing,” said Fischer. If we are doing what we can do to help monarchs – most importantly, establishing habitat with milkweed and nectar resources from spring to fall – we are doing everything we can, she said.

For a source of real-time summer observations, Fischer advises checking out Chip Taylor’s blog (monarchwatch.org/blog/). Founder of The Monarch Watch program, Taylor is a scientist/researcher who has been working with monarchs the entirety of his career.