On Friday, March 15, we had tens of thousands of painted lady butterflies dispersing through our yard in Orange County. Some stopped to sip nectar on the lilac verbena in the backyard and a few stopped in the front yard for the bladderpod and bush sunflower. It was a stream of movement from the SE to the NW. When we get a wet winter after years of drought, their numbers explode in the desert and they leave (disperse) and head to the coast and then northward. It is not a migration because they do not come back. Truly a nature spectacle!