Back to This Week's Update Why do you think monarch sightings soared this week? Questions Raised Was the migration simply late this spring? Would that explain why so few people reported monarchs until this past week?   Is this is a detection issue? That is, did it take longer this spring for each observer to see his/her first monarch because there are fewer monarchs in the populatoin this spring?   Should we expect the number of sightings reported to correlate with the size of the monarch population? After all, each observer only reports one butterfly, their first of spring, regardless of the number of monarchs they see.   Did the number of observers change, or their level of enthusiasm? How might these things affect our results?   Other questions, predictions or possible explanations for the sudden increase in sightings? Collect Your Thoughts