Last year was a banner year for butterflies in our area; we had the second best count ever (in terms of individual butterflies seen), with 40 species and 987 butterflies tallied. Average for our count is 33.8 species and 560.667 individual butterflies. Obviously we can't see 8/10 of a species or .667 butterflies, but we can save the math philosophy for another day. Of greater import is the fact that that average is skewed pretty dramatically by two outlier counts--one of 57 species and 1292 individuals and last year's 40/nearly-1000 tally. Numbers adjusted to exclude those two counts yield averages of 31.538 species and 471.615 individual butterflies. Hard, really, to decide what is average, but the worst we ever had was 214 butterflies on the day (in 2001); we're happy with--or at least grateful for--anything higher than that.
Weather reports for Saturday had been pretty dire all week: the initial forecast was for mid-90's and thunderstorms. The powers that predict weather backed off that a bit, but by Friday were still predicting 93 and humid. Friday's forecast was for thunderstorms, and they conveniently held off until after midnight, at which point it just POURED--roughly half an inch in whatever short period of time it took. So setting out Saturday, we had to look forward to ten hours of schlepping through mud and soaking wet foliage in potentially nasty heat and humidity. Should be fun.
Butterfly counts require significant preparation. For a look at a real pro, you need to go observe my brother, who runs a count in middle Texas on the 4th of July, with temperatures always ranging in the upper 90's or higher. The first year I went with him, we got to a spot at the end of the 10-hour day (about 6:00), and he whipped out--wait for it--ice cream bars. Still recognizable as ice cream bars. I am not making this up. My husband and I are not in David's league, but we've had plenty of practice by now, and we can manage to rustle up a decent effort. Conversation 7:00 yesterday morning:
Me: Okay. I've packed the lunch. There's chicken, cheese, carrots, pickles, olives, two kinds of fruit, cookies, pretzels, and potato chips [n.b. salt replacement, don't you know!]. To drink there's a gallon of ice water, a gallon of lemonade, a bunch of Pepsi, and a jug of Gatorade. Do we need anything else?
Tim: This is just a day trip, right?
Ha ha.
But I did add the gallon jug of ice water-soaked washcloths. Those are GREAT at the end of the day! Add a bottle of water for carrying on hikes, cups, paper towels, and can huggers, and lunch is pretty well taken care of.
Loading the car involves several trips. In addition to the ice chest and the three gallon jugs, there are:
Thermometer
2 butterfly nets
Plastic vials (for holding live butterflies during identification process--useful for comparison to photos in books; see below)
2 hats
sunscreen
insect repellant spray
insect repellant wipes
Skin-So-Soft lotion (in case you haven't previously encountered this oddity, Skin-So-Soft makes great insect repellant. Mostly for women, though; men tend to find the smell sissy.)
2 pairs of binoculars
Digital camera
Notebook and pencil
Backup pencil (in case of loss or irrecoverable breakage)
Last year's NABA count report
A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies (we have two editions; sometimes both go)
Butterflies Through Binoculars (ditto on the two editions)
Butterflies of the East Coast (not a field manual, as it is an oversized hardback and weighs about four pounds, but if you have a car, this is a great resource with fabulous photos)
a binder with side-by-side photos of easily confused species (like Spicebush Swallowtail and black form Tiger Swallowtail)
Permission letters (original and copies for each counter--allowing us to access private property; three of our best sites are privately owned, and cops in VA are particular about the niceties of trespassing.)
2 cell phones (this was a first this year, as it was the first year we both had cell phones, but it proved to be extremely useful for alerting each other about unusual so the other could see it too. More on this later.)
and some other stuff I can't remember right now. Next year, I'm adding a pair of shoes to change into after the last big hiking stop; my boots are just too heavy and my feet hurt too much at the end of the day!
Okay, maybe more than several trips. It also usually entails several more trips back to the house to gather up stuff we forgot. Yesterday was no exception, but we did lumber out onto the road about 8:15, heading to our first stop.
I'll skip the play-by-play and just go for the highlight version. Signs were not auspicious: our first stop, at Irwin, for those of you familiar with the junket, is very often our best site for butterflies, but in some years, the owner farms it, in which case, we come up with a big fat not very much. We turned the corner yesterday and discovered: hay. The whole lot had been recently mown down to the ground for a hay harvest. There were a couple of patches of unmown clover, and an hour's trudging around getting our feet soaked turned up 12 species (one an unidentified skipper) and 67 individual butterflies, most of them Variegated Fritillaries--22 of those. That doesn't sound too bad, until you realize that last year we got 27 species and 231 individual butterflies in the same spot. Makes for a totally different start-of-day.
The bird haul, had we been counting those, would have been fabulous, however, including a vast flock of Red Wing Blackbirds, but also numerous other species. I stirred up some quail at one point, flushing them out of the deep clover. They were NOT happy with me--maybe a nest nearby. A Great Blue Heron--the first of several on the day--flew overhead. The place was a veritable orchestra of bird song, so my feet were wet, but my mood was happy. The richness of the bird life continued throughout the day, as a matter of fact; we saw Scarlet Tanager--something we have seen in the area before, but not for many years, and a real prize: a Red-Headed Woodpecker. Only ever saw one of those in the area before--they migrate through and don't usually hang about.
Tim got the Honors of Irwin for a Common Checkered Skipper (female); the only one of its kind on the day.
Our next stop is down on the James River, which was up very high. This weekend is the James River Bateau Festival, an annual event in which history buffs float bateaux down the river from Lynchburg to Maidens. [nb: they can't spell "Maidens," but it's only been 24 years....) I took this photo of one of the bateaux as it floated by at Westview Landing.
(One great advantage of the butterfly count coinciding with the Bateau Festival is that there are porta-potties set up at Cartersville Landing for the occasion. Believe me: the facilities on the route are few and far between; we take what we can get!)
One of the boaters told me that the river had risen about two feet since the thunderstorms the night before--it was running very fast and they were making great time. This was good for them, but bad for us, as we ordinarily count on counting a great many butterflies at the edges of the river--some of them puddling in the mud, many of them nectaring at plants on the river's edge. All of this was underwater yesterday. I took my usual hike through Westview-on-the-James (private camp, permission generally granted annually), and grumbled the whole was as I was getting a whole lot of nothing but Eastern Tailed Blues and Cabbage Whites. This is a site at which we usually get a good variety of things, including, VERY reliably, Hackberry Emperors, Tawny Emperors, and Anglewings--Question Marks and Commas. Yesterday: not a single one of the above. (In fact, we didn't get a single Hackberry or Tawny Emperor all day--an Asterocampa shut out for the first time ever.) All was not lost, however, as I came back with the official Butterfly Count Photo of the Decade:
I call it "Goat Butt in Tree." Yes, I DID see it climb up into the tree, though I missed the onset, and so have no idea whatsoever WHY it felt it needed to get there. Was it chasing a goat of the opposite sex? Did it smell bananas or paper towels or something else good to eat? Was it emulating a squirrel? There is no way to tell. It bleated up a storm while it did it, though. No, I did NOT attempt to help it get back down. For one thing, it was on the other side of a barbed-wire fence, in a space it was sharing with at least a dozen other goats, some of them with very large horns. For another, these were not just your little small cute goats. This were big honker goats. That thing in the tree is the size of a German Shepherd at least. (I don't know who owns these goats; they were never there before, I don't think. There is no house or owner in sight, so no one to alert.) I figure that the bugger got himself up there, albeit with a great deal of trouble, he can jolly well get himself back down. I was just pleased that I had presence of mind to remember that I had a camera with me the better to document the event with.
Tim took the honors of Westview, as well, at a Buttonbush (at least, I think that's what it is--I haven't seen it yet), on which he got, all in one fell swoop, Zebra Swallowtail, Tiger Swallowtail (the first of both for the day, though I duplicated them at my end of the park), Silver Spotted Skipper (one of only three on the entire day, a count low for us; compare with a high of 50 one year), Gemmed Satyr (last recorded on our count in 2001), and Juniper Hairstreak. This is an unusual species for us, but yesterday was the only hairstreak of the day. The photo is of the second individual Juniper Hairstreak, also found by Tim at a site much later in the day, a photo made possible by the use of the cell phones. This is one of my very favorite butterflies, so he called me up to come and see it. (The green background is weird, but it's what came out. Must have been the vegetation in the background, blurred out because of the macro-focus.)
We last recorded Juniper Hairstreak in 2006; the only other time was 2001, and in both of those years we saw only one individual, so we might no have been having a good day overall, but it was a good day for Callophrys gryneus! It was very unusual that we would get no other hairstreaks--commonly we get Gray Hairstreak and Red-Banded Hairstreak; the only years we didn't were the very early years of the count when we were unfamiliar with the local fauna and ill-adept enough that most of our count consisted of butterflies bigger than a quarter!
I suppose I should confess to a moment of comedy--at least, it would have provided a moment of comedy had there been anyone there to view it besides me. I was poking around in the mud at the edge of a pond in the Powhatan Wildlife Management Area, trying to determine which of several flying things were Buckeyes and which were Snouts (one of the latter got easier to identify when it kept landing on my hat, a distinctly Snout-like behavior), when I suddenly heard, quite clearly, and quite nearby, the hoot of a Barred Owl. I turned to see if I could see it--startled at hearing it in the middle of the afternoon--and I heard it (or another one) louder and behind me. There followed a brief moment of goofiness as I turned round and round, trying to locate the bird by its increasingly loud hooting, when I suddenly remembered that the hooting of the Great Horned Owl is the ringtone I have set on my phone for Tim's calls. The phone was in my backpack, and thus, amazingly, kept moving behind me every time I turned around. Oops. Old Fogey alert. Don't tell my students; I'm sure they would think there is a special place in hell for anyone dumb enough not to recognize her own cell phone ringing. Still, as I got to see the Juniper Hairstreak as a result of the folly, I'll live with the humiliation.
Here's the Snout not on my hat:
Other highlights:
Butterfly Feat of the Day: Tim caught a skipper in his bare hands, without squishing it, and carted it across a field so we could transfer it to a vial (by way of net) for identification purposes. I took two swings at skippers with the net yesterday and missed both times. They don't call 'em "skipper" for nothing. I only wish I had been there to see someone grab one with his bare hands. Amazing.
Real Butterfly Photo du Jour, this one, of a Harvester. This is a gem of a little butterfly. Very pretty, vary rare--at least in our area. Never officially recorded in any part of Central Virginia prior to the beginning of our count; we have now counted it in all three of the counties into which our circle encroaches. Last recorded on our count in 2004. I got the honors of this one: it was puddling in the mud in the one un-drowned patch of river's edge along the James, along with several Eastern Tailed Blues. It was totally serendipitous--no stalking required or engaged. In fact, I didn't even see the thing until I was taking the photos of the Blues. Saw it actually through the camera lens. Here are the blues:
And here is the Harvester:
Even the stripes on his antennae are in focus. That little bug was sitting STILL!
As it turned out, the weather reporters were, much to our great relief and pleasure, wrong again. The day turned out to be nearly perfect for butterfly counting; about 95% sunshine all day, temperatures in the 80s until about 4:00 when it crept up to 91, low humidity, and a light breeze. There was enough sun to dry off the vegetation (and the wet butterfly wings); it was perfect flying weather. And still we weren't getting much. I surmise that this is a good indicator that the crop is down this year; if they weren't flying yesterday, it's because they weren't around! We groused our way through the day, grumbling about how little we were seeing, and how amazed we were about not seeing certain things--it's a rare count when we see more Zebra Swallowtails (4) than Spicebush Swallowtails (zero), no Wood Nymphs, and three Sachems. (We've had counts, including last year's, with more than 100 of the latter. Last year's tally: 351. We had 100 on one bush last year....). We got only 8 Great Spangled Fritillaries (six of them way at the end of the day in one spot; photo below--both are Great Spangled Fritillary, but one is really beat up!), and only six Tiger Swallowtails--an impressively low number for a bug that has been "Big Bug of the Day" before. Plenty of fodder for grousing here.
One final insult was that Vanessas were in short, short supply (there are four Vanessas, three of which occur in Virginia--Painted Lady, American Lady, and Red Admiral, and they are a kind of butterfly count barometer, in part due to the possibly apocryphal story of someone in California once nabbing all four Vanessas with one swing of the net). We usually get all three of the locally available species, though never in one swing of the net; indeed, seldom in the net at all, as they are quite speedy little tykes, and never in really large numbers, but we were coming down to the very end of the day yesterday working on two American Ladies and nothing else. We headed down the drive at Powhatan Lakes, the penultimate stop, and hopped out of the car to chase down an anglewing (turned out to be Question Mark). Conversation:
Me: Wasn't it last year that we were driving down this road complaining that we hadn't seen a Red Admiral all day, and one landed more or less on the hood of the car?
Tim: You mean like that one?
Voila, there it was, on the ground behind me.
(Not a great photo, as the little guy never stopped moving, and his wings are blurry, but check out the proboscis! Nicely curled and in focus.)
This would have provided us with endless amazing-coincidence butterfly count stories for years to come, as well as resulting in our forever branding Powhatan Lakes as the spot where we can count on getting Red Admiral, except that it turned out that it WASN'T Red Admiral we got there last year, but Eastern Comma. So much for memory. This is why we bring pencils. And keep notes. Not more old-foginess: heat-induced delusion. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Nevertheless: Powhatan Lakes turned out to be a great stop--we picked up not only the Red Admiral, but also a Spring Azure (see photo below)--the only one on the day. One of the fun things about doing the count is that it is pretty consistently true that no matter how badly things are going, we pick up something new at each site--and something that we don't get anywhere else in the circle. At least makes you FEEL as if it was necessary to go everywhere we go and to spend as much time as we spent!
At the end of the day, we staggered home after 9 1/2 hours (about typical for us), showered, eliminated all ticks--a record high this year of nearly 40, most of them, fortunately running around on t-shirts and jeans looking for entree), and regrouped at Rocco's for the traditional butterfly count compilation dinner. MUCH to our amazement, the compilation revealed that we had done considerably better than we thought. I had estimated 20 species, and we guessed we had maybe 250 butterflies--which was dangerously near the all time lows on both parameters, but lo and behold: we came up with 33 species and 381 butterflies. Evidently, despite our grousing, we had been quietly racking up a decent haul, one little butterfly at a time. Given the things we DIDN'T see, an amazing outcome, even if 105 of them were Eastern Tailed Blues--the littlest bug finished "Big Bug of the Day" for about the 10th or 11th year, followed by Cabbage White with a respectable showing of 67. Call it an "average" count. Much better than the "abysmal" we had anticipated.
We should have the car unpacked just about the time we have to load it up again for next year's count! Anyone want to join us?
Note: All photos here are pictures I took on yesterday's count. I linked to photos of butterflies for which I did not have photos. You can click on any photo for a larger version--at least you can in Internet Explorer and Flock, the only two browsers I tried.
UPDATE: 7/10/09 Thanks to the Dave Barry Blog, I learn that my goat up a tree is not the only goat up a tree. I wonder if this is common?
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