Butterfliers,
"Frustrating weather" was the polite version of the phrase uttered all
weekend by Harry LeGrand and myself as we searched for butterflies in the
NC mountains. With forecasts predicting Sunday's weather as "partly
cloudy with highs in the 70's" we thought we'd actually see at least a few
patches of blue sky with some sunshine. Nope. We managed to salvage the
weekend with butterflies found during brighter (but not sunny) skies from
essentially 2pm to 5pm each day, but we fought fog, clouds, haze, and wind
chills in the low 60s all weekend. Having said all this, while reading
the following lists, you may think, "What are they complaining about?
That's a lot of good butterflies!", but cooperative weather should've
brought not only more butterflies, but more importantly, more time to
butterfly and to explore more places.
Anyway, complaining about the weather aside, we enjoyed still our weekend
in the mountains. Saturday 26 May 04 was spent on Forest Service Roads in
Buncombe Co. with Gail Lankford, and Sunday 27 May 04 was spent just off
the Blue Ridge Parkway around Price Park, the Moses Cone area, and down
the escarpment via Sampson Rd.
I took a lot of photos, since that was one of the purposes of the trip,
but since I'm leaving for MI for a week, it'll likely be 2 or 3 weeks
before I can get them online (unless I squeak them in tomorrow night).
For you ode folks, we saw very few dragonflies, only 5 species, but they
included some high quality ones like Gray Petaltail, Southern Pygmy
Clubtail, and Twelve-spotted Skimmer.
Here's the annotated b'fly list with the 26th in the first column and the
27th in the second:
250 - Pipevine Swallowtail
10 5 E. Tiger Swallowtail
4 - Spicebush Swallowtail
2 35 Cabbage White
- 10 Clouded Sulphur
3 35 Orange Sulphur
7 - Harvester
1 - Banded Hairstreak
- 2 Gray Hairstreak
8 25 E. Tailed-Blue
120 - Summer Azure
- 1 azure sp. -- very worn female (late Spring?)
5 - Appalachian Azure -- one worn female, large with broad
black borders on upper forewing; 4 fresh males, large and bright blue
representing a possible second brood of this species or else the Summer
Azures have a huge range in size or something else yet unexplained is
going on . . .
7 35 Great Spangled Fritillary
- 100 Aphrodite Fritillary
- 150 Meadow Fritillary
1 1 Pearl Crescent -- first day was a male with strong
orange-tipped & undersided antennal clubs, although it was not
particularly big; second day was a typical, but heavily marked, female
2 - Question Mark
3 1 E. Comma -- the comma on the second day was puzzling and
we pondered the possibility of Green Comma for a while as the dorsal
surface color was much richer on the basal portion of the wings, and the
forewing spot pattern didn't look right for Eastern. Also the undersides
were dark, but they were dark browns, not blacks, and there was no green
striping. The under forewing tip was orangish (not grayish), and both
ends of the bold comma mark were thickened, so we decided it was likely an
odd Eastern. I got great photos that I'll post for comment eventually.
- 1 American Lady (worn)
- 1 Common Buckeye
1 - Red-spotted Purple
- 1 satyr sp. -- didn't perch in sight
2 - N. Pearly-eye
- 1 Common Wood-Nymph
- 3 Monarch
100 250 Silver-spotted Skipper
- 1 Least Skipper
- 4 Peck's Skipper (1 worn male, 3 medium-wear females)
1 1 Crossline Skipper -- fresh males, 1st brood up there
1 1 N. Broken-Dash -- very fresh males
5 6 Little Glassywing
4 - Dun Skipper
10 - Pepper and Salt Skipper (new state record high)
Good Butterflying,
Jeff
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Jeffrey S. Pippen
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Rm 139 Biological Sciences Bldg, Biology Department Box 90338
Duke University, Durham, NC 27708
PH: (919) 660-7278 <jspippen@duke.edu>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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