The past few Septembers, after years of struggle and hope and fear, we were thrilled that a couple of nights each season, hundreds of monarchs showed up to prove that the Monarch Trail on the County Grounds was still a magnet for our magnificent orange and black friends. This autumn, with the migration just underway, we are already slack-jawed and stupefied as thousands of monarchs showed up over the Labor Day weekend turning some of our trees into images of the Mexican preserves in miniature. Monarch butterflies, experts at predicting weather, took to the skies on Thursday morning when the wind shifted around from the Northeast. This early wave will hopefully be a harbinger of more to come. Thank you all, monarch mavens and movers! We are doing what we set out to do. We are restoring the needed habitat to welcome waves of winged magic. Please enjoy videographer Rachel Womack's short film of the "Migration Overture, 2018."