Monarchs return with Santa Anas

Ken Clark sent in this image (shot 10/21/06) from his amazing batch of fall monarchs - "his best year ever." Ken estimated 200-300 monarchs hatched in his yard in East San Fernando Valley near Hansen Dam. Also on the monarch front, Walt Sakai gave a very interesting update on our California monarchs at the October 2006 NABA-LA meeting in Santa Monica. Thank you Walt!
Steve Kutcher reports (Nov. 3, 2006) that monarchs are busy in his yard in Arcadia, he assumes because the Santa Ana winds are pushing them west to the coast. Today (Nov. 5) we had a female laying eggs in our yard in Sherman Oaks (right as I was trying to prune the raggedy milkweeds - so much for that now!). We released 63 monarchs in Sept/Oct, from 2 or 3 females that visited starting in late August. We also had a few lonely males that moved on, but not before they gorged on the Mexican Sunflowers!
(Update/January 2007: Monarchs started hatching in the New Year, and we have about 100 spread across three cages. Most nights the cages are brought inside. Some monarchs are hitching a ride to Ventura with a friend to be closer to their wintering grounds!)