The Butterfly Big Year

Some Photos

August 31, 2008

Along the Road

The three photos below are by Janet Chu.

Bob and Dr. Boyce Drummond at the Bucksnort Saloon, Sphinx Park, Colorado.

Mead’s Wood Nymph, Deckers, Colorado

The photo below is by Jim Wiker:

Hunting pearly eyes and lacewing skippers deep in the giant canebrakes, near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Temperature and humidity both in high nineties. This is also where I picked up a few dozen chiggers.

And the photo below is by Boyce A. Drummond

Pawnee montane skipper (Hesperia leonardus montana) on gayfeather (Liatris punctata) that Bob saw in Trumbull Colorado with Boyce Drummond on September 1, 2008.

A Wide-Ranging Search for Northern Species

August 31, 2008

All Over!

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Boulder, en route to Gray's River
The latter half of August has been a giant crazy-eight, a last-gasp effort to find Northern species before Autumn's embrace -- if Kentucky can be called Northern! I began by driving Powdermilk through Idaho and Montana, seeking Christina Sulphurs and Hayden's Ringlets; then E. Utah for Nokomis Fritillaries and big Yuma Skippers. From Denver, I flew to Maine to track down Dorcas and Bog Coppers, white admirals, Atlantis Fritillaries… and to hear John Piot's 40-drum steel band, Flash in the Pan. Then to the subtropical heat and rain of Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio and Mississippi meet in bald cypress swamps and canebrakes. This paper plate led to my rendezvous with Jim Wiker & Sally Agnew. Jim guided me deep into wet habitats replete with uncommon satyrs, skippers, and carnivorous, Halloween-hued Harvesters. Onward in the rented Bronze Copper from one end of Kentucky to another, past "butterflies already yellow with August," as Ezra Pound had it, to meet stunning Diana. Back to Colorado by rail, WY, NE, SD, home -- and summer is over.

When I returned to Illinois, it wasn't for the scenes on the reverse, but for this one. Here I witnessed three (all 3) kinds of pearly eyes sipping saps at the same tree, at the same time, in a light rain at dusk. In that same canebrake I collected over 100 chiggers -- all over my body. It was just about worth it!

Weaving the ridges of the KY-VA-WV borders, in deep Appalachia, I beheld the enormities of mountaintop removal for coal, and wound through one sorry little coal town and fouled stream after another. But, it was the way of life, as logging has been where I live. I paused in Matewan, scene of the labor battle leading to the infamous "massacre" of miners by company goons. This is also the heart of Hatfield-McCoy country. "Bygones are bygones," I was told by Cathy McCoy, who then went on to tell me of the massacre of McCoys by the Hatfields. My overall impression of this land, where towns are named Majestic, Lovely, and Beauty, is one of a conflicted landscape --

and a people not without their own conflicts. But also a place of courtesy, difficult and distinctive dialect, and actual beauty in the hills, when they escape the coal-shovel. And, I saw one of the great butterfly spectacles of the entire year here in Matewan. It was on the site of yet another feud -- a rip-rapped riverbank slope above the Tug Fork, where Buddleia davidii (butterfly bush) and kudzu were struggling for dominance. There, an astonishing array of butterflies thronged the purple Buddleia: hundreds of swallowtails, fritillaries, ladies, skippers, and others -- 21 species in all. They included scores of big, flashy silver-spotted skippers, whose larvae -- with their red, yellow-spotted heads like a coal miner's hard-hat and headlamp -- quite happily feed on kudzu.

Though I spent most nights of my Appalachian swing in my rental car, the Bronze Copper, I did splurge for a night (and a desperately needed shower) here at this inn. Once a state-of-the-art company town school, it held children until 1992. (The school up the road was for "colored" kids.) It has since become a pleasant hostelry, situated hard below Big Black Mountain, the highest point in Kentucky, and a classic locale for the big, black and blue fritillary known as Diana -- my reason for coming.

And another great old inn: Glen Isle Lodge, in Bailey, Colorado, type locality for Mead's Wood Nymph. My mother, brother, and I stayed here in 1964 to seek that butterfly, and I also had my first honeymoon here in 1966. Glen-Isle is essentially, amazingly unchanged -- right down to the proprietor, Mrs. Barbara Tripp, who was there on both those earlier visits! In nearby S. Platte Canyon, with biologist Boyce Drummond, I saw the Fed. endangered b'fly, the Pawnee Montane Skipper. And after the field, Antler Ale at the Bucksnort Saloon in Sphinx Park, a pink-granite Brigadoon in a narrow Front Range Canyon.

The Olympics and The Cascades

August 12, 2008

Washington State

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Late July and early August have been a time to be at home with Thea, as she cruises through her chemo, and with my grandchildren, before 2/3 of them moved to Guadalajara (see Thea's photo).

But I also got up into the mountains of home several times, cherry-picking the butterflies of late summer. The Olympics (Washington's, not Beijing's) displayed superb wildflowers. But it was as if a butterfly-specific neutron bomb had struck – I did not see one, where hundreds, or thousands, usually fly! One fritillary caterpillar crossed the trail to Hurricane Hill, and so this strange, wet, cold summer proceeds.

RMP tracking ringlets with stepson Tom Hellyer, and grandchildren Cristina and David Hellyer, and Francis VanBockel. Photo by Thea.

But the Cascades were better, sunnier, and fairly prolific with frits and skippers, nymphs and sulphurs, checkers & blues. By the grace of happenstance, on Slate Peak in the Pasayten Wilderness Area, I ran into my friend Dave Nunnalee. Along with entomologist David James, he is working on a book on Washington's butterfly eggs, larvae, and pupae. Dave was hunting ova of the Arctic Blue. We shared a splendid encounter with the rare and beautiful Astarte Fritillary (see his fine photographs) and also put up a Vidler's Alpine among the parti-colored scatter of alpine wildflowers.

And thanks to that chance field meeting, I enjoyed a bed and a good meal that night, as Dave's guest, as well as his good company. And what company could be better than that of a wildeflowers, butterflies, and a curious, observant, and simpatico naturalist? Except maybe the grandchildren.

Below: The very rare Astarte Fritillary at Slate Peak, Washington. Photos: David Nunnalee

Ditto for another trip to the hills with my master-dentist and good field-buddy, Dr. David Branch. We began here at the Cottage for sustenance, then ranged into canyons as dry as the Olympics were wet. Nonetheless, we found my special quarry: pine white, zerene fritillary, mariposa copper, and half-moon hairstreak. Next: points E.

Warming Days of July

July 29, 2008

Gray's River

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Warming Days of July
Swede Park, Gray's River

It's delicious to be home for a bit between the High Sierra / High Rockies and the Olympics / North Cascades. True, there's not much flying here compared to those butterfly-rich ranges, where I hugely enjoyed high times, among montane specialties such as Behr's Sulphurs, Magdalena Alpines, and Melissa Arctics. Still, it was fine today to walk in our hills of home with Thea, recovered from a tough bout of chemotherapy, watching big cherry-spotted Clodius Parnassians.

I've been especially grateful lately for our public lands -- BLM, NPS, USFWS, and especially USFS, which welcome butterfly nets. There's nothing less helpful to the peripatetic naturalist than a barbed-wire fence with a big "NO TRESPASSING" sign. I prefer Woody Guthrie's little-known verse: "But on the other side, it didn't say nothin', that side was meant for you and me." Traveling this land as I am, I become more appreciative than ever of those lands held in trust -- and in access -- for us all.

Thea just came in with a big bowl of raspberries -- I've got to go.

My visit to Colorado's eastern slope was hosted and facilitated by dear friends Jan and Amy Chu of Boulder, whose good photos grace this entry. We prowled the Gambel's Oak Country to see the extraordinary, amethyst-purple Colorado Hairstreak, the State Butterfly.

[top] -- A few places I've been hanging out lately, along the butterfly highway.

[bottom] -- And a good laugh! Well, they can't always get these right.

And a few artifacts from the road --

Baltimore Pin, Illinois

Leaves from the Thunder Tree, Highline Canal, Colorado

[left feather] -- from a Rocky Mountain Goshawk

[right feather] Stellar's Jay feather, and a Florida pea

Photos below by Janet Chu

Magdalena Alpine butterfly on the nose of Amy Chu

"Reserved for Bob," Idaho Springs

Edwards' Fritillary female, about to be released

RMP & Janet Chu at the Thunder Tree, High Line Canal, 33 years after first butterfly count there

Looking Back to Illinois

July 22, 2008

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Alturas, California, Looking back to Illinois

So this is the very stuff—the plant known as The Noble Hop (Humulus lupulus) -- that serves as the principle bittering agent in beer.

But it is not only lepidopterists who take refreshment and sustenance from this handsome herb. My guide, friend, and colleague in Illinois, Jim Wiker, is the leading student of the pretty and fascinating moths of the genus Papaipema. The caterpillars of these moths bore into the roots of particular plants -- ferns, grasses, wild indigo, spiderwort, or many others, depending upon their species. While we were in the field searching for Baltimore Checkerspots (which we saw -- a great lifer for me!), he found a caterpillar in this very vine. He will rear it in his lab at home -- he's discovered that all the specialized "paps" will feed on carrots in captivity!

(Left side text with arrow pointing to plant): Here's where the larva was feeding in its cubbyhole:

(Bottom left text): Hop Azure butterflies lay their eggs on Humulus, and we encountered lots of Eastern Commas, foxy-hued butterflies whose old-fashioned and charming name is the Hop Merchant.

At this estimable brewpub-cum-alehouse in Rockford, I recuperated from a steamy, ticky, chiggery week afield -- or was I preparing for it? -- with a pint or two of an excellent bitter IPA actually named Humulus Lupulus. Thus bolstered, Jim and I explored native habitat remnants including dry hill prairies and wet sedge meadows. The latter appear to be holding their special skippers for now, but the former are losing theirs at a tragic rate. For example, the large and striking Ottoe Skipper seems to be gone from Iowa, and at a reserve where it was formerly abundant, we found only one -- Jim thinks it might be the last he'll see there. Ditto for other prairie species. Suspected agents: overzealous burning, B.t. corn.

Pledge the Butterfly-a-thon! (All the women already have.)

Northerly

June 26, 2008

Alaska

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This was the only open business between Eagle Summit and the Yukon River at Circle. Gas (no higher than at home), coffee, and a BLT were all essential by then, as well as a mosquito-free W.C.

I stopped in again for one of these [beers] on the way back, and a goldminer named John Brown insisted I drink a Crown Royal with him, so we swapped rounds, along with stories of prospecting for gold and butterflies. The whiskey helped sleep come for the third of five bright nights passed in a rental car.

In Circle: fish traps fashioned from birch, and permafrost banks melting into the Yukon.

Snowshoe hares, red foxes, and moose are much more frequent than automobiles.

Endemic Bottlecaps: Anything but Bud! (This Bear's for you)

The Outhouse of the Midnight Sun at Galbraith Lake--next to the last chance before the Arctic Ocean. Photo by Keith Andrews.

The habitat on Eagle Summit -- a place I've longed to visit for decades -- is much like this, except it was green with spring and spotted with the pastels of arctic flowers. The sky, however, was even grayer, and the high winds and rain kept the butterflies* at bay, pinning me down like a prostrate willow. * such as: Banded Alpine, Melissa Arctic, and Eversmann's Parnassian.

By coincidence, this Bookfest was underway when I arrived in Fairbanks. In the evenings, I was fortunate to hear readings by and hang out with writer friends including Nancy Lord, Bill Sherwonit, Eva Saulitas, John Straley, and Seth Kantner, as well as beloved artist/naturalist Ray Troll, who is also a rocker. But that isn't what I came north for. It was high time to head up the Dalton Highway to the North Slope. There, the sun came out, and out and out, and with it, the butterflies of the High Arctic.

Catalina Island

June 20, 2008

Catalina Island

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Catalina Scrapbook

Given an unexpected second chance, I waterfoiled again those 26 miles across the sea. Santa Catalina was a' waitin' for me, and I was ready to romance the island's special butterfly – again. The Avalon hairstreak is one of the most narrowly endemic species in the world. Unlike the first attempt, this time I hiked far up into the hills, up to the island crest, where I could see the Pacific on both sides. All alone up there, I gazed down on the harbor, teeming with lovers and tourists, their voices drifting up to me – the only one among all these pilgrims seeking little gray insects up on the island's heights.

At last, on a ridge out over the Palisades, looking down to green Kelpy Coves, I found strymon avalona! The mouse-gray males shot around the tops of the coffeeberry and manzanita and Catalina mahogany bushes. Their favored nectar, St. Catherine's Lace, spread a creamy canopy over the surrounding hills At one point, a trio of avalonas swirled a dervish with big, bright, American painted lady and a curious Costa's hummingbird: a stunning spectacle.

I was so enthralled that, even after jogging half the long switchbacks down the hot mountain to the sea, I missed the boat by five minutes.

Soaked and sore but happy, I took the last ferry off the island to somewhere else, never so happy for a five-buck Heineken – watching the porpoises leap their loops and a sooty shearwater overtake us at 30 knots, as Catalina receded into the sea mist & sunset.

Home Again

June 01, 2008

The Great Northwest

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June first, 2008

My first visit to the Northeast this year, occasioned by events at Yale, was met with -- what else? -- RAIN! A field trip to Yale Myers Forest was rich in redstarts and raindrops, bursting with birch-bark and devoid of butterflies. After yet another rare spring hairstreak hunt in South Jersey -- one blessed sunny day brought it out -- I aborted further plans for Florida, skedaddled home, and was glad to be there. We are encountering an unwanted reprise of cancer, and I needed to be home with Thea.

As she gained strength between surgery and chemotherapy, she urged me to get out at it. This allowed me to pursue the late spring butterflies of a later-than-usual spring in our own backyard Cascades.

For five days I skirted the heavy run-off between the volcanoes, one of these days actually sunny! I camped beside Stonehenge, on several kinds of public lands, and in a freeway rest area where I watched a drug deal go down as I prepared specimens.

I found Indra, swallowtails, Dark Wood Nymphs, Great Arctics, and Luci Blues -- in all, 21 species new for the year. This brings the total to 199 -- nearly a quarter of the fauna in five months.

But beyond the mere numbers, every day I've looked into the lives of creatures doing what they do to survive, doing the best they can in the face of a cold spring, a warming world, wildfire, and everything that we exact from the land. And sometimes, because of it -- like the fritillaries, skippers, and sulphurs, all drinking from a ditch beside an alfalfa field, moistened by irrigation sprinklers.

A moth with a poetic name, Euclidea cupidea -- and a big, rare Pine Snake, both cryptic against the South Jersey pinelands, (see photos) give me reason to continue this crazy caper, as does a Ceanothus Silk Moth -- her eggs mostly laid, her body spent on a country back road -- as much as all the butterflies in China.

Next: Southern Cal. Redux, Alaska, Illinois, and a great loop through the western ranges. And the beat goes on.

Photo: Pat Sutton

Photo: Pat Sutton

Photo: Pat Sutton

Hunting for Hairstreaks

May 14, 2008

Across the west

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Now that the late, cool northern spring is thinking about settling into summer, the concern shifts from finding anything to finding those species that will not fly again this year: the vernal specialists with a single generation. As it happens, a number of these spring fliers belong to a group of butterflies know as hairstreaks -- "hair" for the tiny tails many kinds trail from their hindwings, "streak" for their stripes, or perhaps derived from their zippy flight. Many hairstreaks make their appearance early, then are seen no more.

I'd had good luck early on finding Henry's elfin in the Texas Hill Country, the Atala hairstreak and Sweadner's hairstreak deep into Florida, and frosted elfins along the Georgia border. Returning west, I was delighted to come across both the Siva hairstreak and the stunning, elusive Arizona hairstreak in the Magdalen Mountains of New Mexico -- the former apple-green, the latter like a bit of Navajo turquoise with vermilion inlay and sapphire dust sprinkled on top. Each species has its own particular habitat and larval host-plant -- oak, juniper, mistletoe for the Great Purple hairstreak -- and none can be taken for granted as far as appearance, flight, and finding them goes.

For almost half a century I'd longed to see the Sandia hairstreak -- discovered by a 4-H kid in 1959, and named and scientifically described by population prophet Paul Ehrlich. Goldy-green with a white stripe below, it blends perfectly with its larval host, beargrass (Noline) a narrow-leaved yucca. I found the plant, and the butterfly, in its type locality (= place of original collection and description) -- the Sandia Mountains, outside Albuquerque. What very different worlds: the beargrass mounts, the huge nearby casino, the city beyond. Hairstreaks, with their specific botanical needs and moist-spring ways, may be some of the first butterflies to feel the warming and drying, and to abandon historical ranges. But the Sandia is still there for now. Certain other species, even brighter green, have already much contracted.

A few days later, when I took the ferry 26 miles across the sea to Catalina Island, the Avalon hairstreak was not there -- at least I failed to find it. One of the narrowest endemics in the world, it flies nowhere else. The prolonged southwestern drought -- though not apparent this past January in San Diego! -- has affected many plants and creatures, as the much-depleted monarchs showed. But the Avalon does have a later generation, and I'll look again. Meanwhile, its nearest relative the Gray hairstreak, was dancing by the dozens in the late-day sun on baked rocky hilltops in the Mojave Desert. But in stark contrast to the highly restricted Avalon, the Gray is a great generalist -- common, widespread, and nowhere a surprise to see, all season long.

The hairstreak genus Mitoura, however, feeders on evergreens and mistletoes, are specialists that must be seen in spring, and only in certain places. I'd hoped to spy the one known as Muir's hairstreak as close as I could to Muir Woods in Marin County -- in a grove of Sargent Cypress high on Mt. Tamalpais. So forty years after the Dharma Bums circumnavigated Tamalpais, I sought John O'Mountains' butterfly above "his" woods. Mitoma muiri didn't show. But a couple of days later, high in the coast range of Mendocino National Forest, on a ridgeline thick with McNab's cypress, I found myself in the flashing company of scores of M. muiri, and camped among them. It was in the deep satisfaction of this hard-won encounter, and all the others, that I bumped down the long dusty road and up the longer concrete stripe of I-5 -- many weeks, many miles, many butterflies since Lodi.

And there was one more hairstreak to be seen before the cold rain of a Washington La Niña May settled in: flitting over the kinnikinnick among camas, violets, and shooting stars, the hazelnut-and-frost mites called hoary elfins -- some of the loveliest and most ephemeral of the hairstreaks of spring.

Photo: David G. James

Elvis!

April 29, 2008

Memphis, TN

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Carrizozo, New Mexico
April 19, 2008

After Okefenokee, and weeks of the hot and tropic lowlands, the mountains of Georgia called. Sweet relief of altitude and cool -- but the southernmost Appalachians were clothed in cloud & rain. West though Tennessee, I happened upon the spring whites and marbles I'd been especially seeking. Then, stopping off for the free morning hour at Graceland to deliver his copy of Orion to Elvis, I saw no butterflies except for a graffito on the sidewalk. But dozens of goldfinches crowded a low marshy spot in the nicely unkempt lawn. But I was eager to flee Memphis -- like Mobile, still a city -- for the Mississippi Delta. Most of the Great River Road ran through a chemical barren of cotton field, but I found deep and wild canebrakes where certain rare butterflies dwell.

The only Delta blues I heard were Robert Johnson on my cassette player and Lightning Hopkins in the cultural center in an almost flooded, almost abandoned Civil War town. But from Georgia thorugh Alabama, Mississippi, across Louisiana and into Texas, I heard echoes of the voices of the transported Cherokee, the cottonbound slaves. Now one sees neo-plantation extrava-mansions that make Graceland look quite modest and remarkably tasteful. And, tin-and-tarpaper shacks -- often just a mosquito's whine apart.

Florida

April 17, 2008

Florida

Friends of Bob’s sent these photos from his Florida sojourn. Bob is headed west through Texas; we expect to have a posting from him soon.

Rough green snake in attitude of mutual regard (photograph by Alana Edwards).

Zebra swallowtail at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park (photograph, Alana Edwards).

Shelling Grounds

March 25, 2008

Florida

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With friends on the Anhinga Trail, Royal Palm, Everglades. Bob is the one on the right.

A bottle of beer, a beach of shells, a sunset, and thee.
Photo credit: Linnaea Pyle

It's true! He is -- and there, and everywhere. More than 10,000 miles so far -- but in an old Civic instead of an old red truck. Long may she run!

As for this Robert, he began his business at 9 with a little fruit stand, bought his farm at 14 -- and he's still here!

The best key lime milk shake conceivable -- I had two!

A dental emergency drew me to ultra-affluent Naples, Florida for a day, and to this pub afterward. Not exactly a NW brewpub, and Florida lager is no IPA -- but better than Novocain. And the kind dentist, Dr Alan Rembos, tipped me off to the Crooked Garden in Pelican Preserve, Fort Myers -- one of the best I've ever seen. Amid oceans of nectar and a flurry of butterflies, I saw 12 species, including queens, zebras, and orange-barred sulphurs the size of small birds.

Sanibel Islands, 14 March
Biologist and writer David Campbell kindly lent me his house and car on Sanibel, Florida's famous "shell island." Much of it is the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. I fondly remember Orion's Forgotten Language Tour stop here, and saw our signed poster at the nature center today -- Janisse Ray, Nels Nelson, Pattiann Rogers, Peter Matheissen, & self. Thea flew out to join me here for a week. Phenomenal birds, herps, plants, and -- yes, butterflies! -- at the Corkscrew Swamp Preserve. Big Cypress, & Everglades. And the storied shells on the beaches here!

Still cool & showery, so mosquitoes few -- but a sufficiency of Lepidoptera. I feel I'm really on my way!

Texas, and Still Not Many Butterflies

February 27, 2008

Sonora, Texas

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Heading south again, I came right back into another series of heavy winter storms off the Pacific. The third night out, after checking sedums for absent elfins in a patch of rare sunshine in the Siskiyous, I was quite literally "stuck in Lodi again." (The first time was in '69 or so, in a $2.50 hotel room replete with bedbugs.) Nor were there many butterflies in the sprayed-and-paved Central Valley, though I did scare up a few in rags of habitat in the San Joaquin; and a couple more in Death Valley, where the post-rain wild flowers were blinding – especially the Desert Gold, a bright yellow-rayed sunflower with orange discs.

Most of my transect of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas has been a matter of creosote bush and yucca, cold wind, dust and desiccation, with scarcely a drop of nectar. Tomorrow I'll hit the Gulf and follow it to Florida, to warmth, moisture, blossom, and butterflies. Soon I'll be swimming in them. I should treasure these weeks when every single butterfly matters immeasurably, when I may, as Robinson Jeffers writes in "November Surf," rediscover the value of rarity.

In a couple of days I'll skirt Mobile. Road-gods willing, I won't get "stuck inside of Mobile" too, with the Memphis blues or not.

Shelter from the storm –
-- had an almost-working 1954 jukebox, with "Peggy Sue" – my favorite!

There was a cardinal -- CARDINAL -- singing outside my room this morning (first bed in a week -- $27 -- in this dry weed of a Texas town*. That, the nearly flat Continental Divide, and the Central Time Zone -- as well as my petrified posterior -- tell me that we've covered considerable distance.

Through driving snow just above Las Vegas, snow on the Chiricahuas, snow in the Pinalenos. Finally, the sun, in Texas -- and the wind, and the drought. Powdermilk and I press on.

* But actually quite charming in the middle -- old limestone courthouse, library, with butterflies out front.

Home for a Quick Break

February 13, 2008

Gray's River & Seattle

Bob Pyle submitted this audio entry.

Big Sur and Beyond

February 06, 2008

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Campbell, California, January 31, 2008
And so ends the first month, an unusually adverse one for butterflies in S. Cal. Of it, I could write an "Essay on Absence" -- but really, isn't that as it should be, for butterflies, in January, while we still have a winter worthy of the name?

A few species, at least, have appeared in canyons above Malibu on rare sunny mornings.

Camped here [Big Sur postcard] at Bixby Bridge, where Jack Kerouac hung out, befriended a donkey and Steller's Jays, suffered DT's, took dictation from the waves, and wrote it all in his funny, dark, shocking, and too-seldom read book, Big Sur. I found Veined Whites & Satyr Anglewings here.

Best garlic grouper [Marisa's card] in the Tijuana River Estuary! (Where I became very well acquainted with the Border Patrol)

Then [monarch photo] down-coast to th best of the monarch colony this poor winter, at Esalen. And [Desert Tower postcard] across to the deserts Anza Borrego, Yula, Salton, And borderlands, where I saw all manner of strange and wonderful fauna. But butterflies, in the continuing spate of cold, wet weather, were not among the sightings.