Folks:
While many or most of you were sitting at home in the rain on Saturday (Sept. 14), four PIEDMONT butterfliers (again, no Coastal Plain folks) traveled all the way to Dare County for the butterfly count. The
weather was partly cloudy in the morning but became cloudy by 2 PM, and things got slow after that as skies darkened a bit. It didn't rain until after we quit at 4:30. Temps were in the low 80s, and it was very humid. Thankfully, there had been no mosquito spraying, which I feared because of the West Nile scare. So, I sampled the very large mosquito population more so that the others (Jeff Pippen, Derb Carter, and Randy Emmitt).

Here's the list, which is practically all from Dare Co. A small portion may be in Hyde, but there is still some uncertainty about boundary lines between these two counties, so I'm considering it all in Dare.

1 Black Swallowtail
3 E. Tiger Swallowtail
40 Palamedes Swallowtail very low
2 Orange Sulphur
125 Cloudless Sulphur quite low
3 Little Yellow
3 Sleepy Orange very low, but didn't spend much time in fields
12 Great Purple Hairstreak
70 Gray Hairstreak pretty fair count
50 Red-banded Hairstreak
16 E. Tailed-Blue
3 Summer Azure
25 Pearl Crescent
1 lady - sp. can't assume American, as Painted is possible here
25 Common Buckeye
10 Viceroy
8 Carolina Satyr
1 Georgia Satyr
30 Common Wood-Nymph
2 Monarch
2 Silver-spotted Skipper
1 Common Checkered-Skipper
1 Swarthy Skipper
110 Clouded Skipper
3 Least Skipper
7 Fiery Skipper
5 Tawny-edged Skipper
7 Southern Broken-Dash
2 Delaware Skipper
15 Aaron's Skipper record state count
6 Yehl Skipper all fairly fresh males
28 Broad-winged Skipper
12 Palatka Skipper probably 4th of July count record, but not a big
deal here
20 Dion Skipper
4 Berry's Skipper
6 Dun Skipper
10 Lace-winged Roadside-Skipper
30 Twin-spot Skipper
1 Salt Marsh Skipper
25 Ocola Skipper very good count here

40 species, with 20 true butterflies and 20 skippers! Plus, we saw a Red Admiral outside the count circle at 4:30. The wetland skippers were in good numbers, and the mistflower (Eupatorium coelestinum) was in peak bloom. A little bit more is being encroached on every year by Phragmites, and a small portion was mowed. But, there was more than enough mistflower to make all the skippers happy. Where are all the true
butterflies? We knew that Vanessa species, and the anglewings, were down this summer, but there weren't many swallowtails, sulphurs were down,
etc. Thankfully, we had no trouble finding decent number of the Poanes and Euphyes skippers, and they often perch side by side on the mistflower for nice comparison. As usual, there were a few mystifying ones, generally on the worn side.

This time we had no exciting non-butterfly sightings (e.g., bears, Timber Rattlesnake, etc.), but we did see Corn Snake, a few N. Harriers, and a good array of dragonflies (Mocha Emerald, Seaside Dragonlet, and others).

--
Harry LeGrand
NC Natural Heritage Program
e-mail: harry.legrand@ncmail.net

Great Purple Hairstreak, Atlides halesus