You know how when you’re looking for something you lost you’ll end up finding everything else? That’s how it feels to search for monarchs.

Coming into this EFTA internship on Fort Carson I was revved up and ready to look for monarchs. However, the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Protocol– the protocol we follow to gather monarch presence and density data– involves looking for more than just those big beautiful orange and black butterflies. It also means learning about plant idenification. This helps to track nectar resources for monarchs to feed on during their tiring migratory journey, and being able to note every plant with a flower on it! The incredible flowers I’ve learned over this internship so far vary from the spiky blooms of plains prickly pear to the sneaky hanging tomatillo flower.

Along this journey to find monarchs, we also look for their host plant genus: milkweeds. So far we’ve found three species of milkweed on Fort Carson: showy (Asclepias speciosa), horsetail (Asclepias verticillata), and narrowleaf (Asclepias fascicularis). Sometimes these are easy to spot, especially the broad leaves of showy milkweed and their star shaped pink flowers.

Sometimes they are not, like stalks of horsetail milkweed in a sea of grass. Can you spot the horsetail milkweed in the picture below? Now count it!

And of course, along the way of searching for flowers and milkweed there are so many more incredible sights to see. I’ve noticed myself paying much more attention to everything around me in nature, and love the simple joy of watching a bee pollinate a flower. I’ve had the chance to see birds like the ash throated flycatcher and insects like wood nymph butterflies all on the way to find monarchs.

After this journey of my first week as an EFTA monarch conservation intern, we found them.

All I can say now is that I intend to keep noticing, continue to discovering new things, and enjoy nature. With this, I will leave you to go find some joy in nature today too.