A total of fifteen folks gathered on the weekend of June 29-30 to explore some of the public gardens in the Chapel Hill and Durham, NC area, including a couple of people from Charleston and Clemson, as well as local members.
Probably due to the extended drought in the area, the number of butterflies species seen only matched the number of participants at 15, but the well-watered gardens had plenty of flowers to see.

We started the morning at the NC Botanical Garden, where we had a few minutes to look around and get oriented to the layout. We began our butterfly list with two Pearl Crescents. We left the NC Botanical Garden earlier than planned, however, because we learned at the last minute that there would be a guided tour of Niche Garden at 10 a.m., a site we had planned to visit in the
afternoon. We returned to the botanical garden later.

The Niche Gardens tour turned out to be a great opportunity that gave the gardeners in the group many great ideas for their home gardens. Nearly everyone left with pots full of plants for their own gardens. Lots of bees and other nectar lovers were attending the many flowers, but we saw only one butterfly, a Red-spotted Purple, to add to the list.

We came back to the NC Botanical Garden after lunch. We spent some time in the formal herb garden and among the flowering native plants, then at 1:30 we were given a special tour of the garden by a very knowledgeable staff member, Alan Johnson. Here we added a few more species to the butterfly list. Although there were many bees and wasps on the flowers, we were a bit surprised to see so few butterflies in the middle of the day in the full sun.

In mid afternoon we added a site to our itinerary that had not been part of the original itinerary, the extensive flower beds at Fearrington Village
south of Chapel Hill. This allowed us to add our only Gray Hairstreak and a few more butterfly species.

On Sunday morning a smaller group met at the entrance of Duke Gardens. We spent quite a bit of time exploring the mostly wooded native plant collection, and then ventured out into the sun in the Terrace garden. Here we found the largest number of individual butterflies of the two days, mostly Fiery Skippers, Sachems, and a few Horace's Duskywings.

This field trip was a great success since most of the participants are gardeners. Several folks are in the beginning stages of developing new butterfly gardens, while others were looking for ways to improve their existing gardens. The four garden sites we visited gave folks plenty of ideas. Although the butterflies themselves were disappointingly sparse, everyone did get to examine several up close, and a few beginners even saw a
life butterfly or two.

Here is the list of butterflies for the two days (O =
Chapel Hill/Orange Co.; D = Durham Co.; F = Fearrington):

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (O - 3)
Cabbage White (F - 1)
Clouded/Orange Sulphur (F - 1)
Gray Hairstreak (F - 1)
Eastern Tailed Blue (O - 1; D - 1)
Pearl Crescent (O - 3; D - 1)
American Lady (D - 1)
Red-spotted Purple (O - 1)
Carolina Satyr (D - 2)
Silver-spotted Skipper (O - 2; D - 2)
Horace's Duskywing (O - 2; D - 5)
Common Sootywing (D - 1)
Fiery Skipper (O - 1; D - 12)
Whirlabout (D - 1)
Sachem (O - 4; D - 8; F - 3)