Butterfliers,
Twenty one participants enjoyed a successful Carolina Butterfly Society
Duke Gardens Butterfly Walk today. Temperatures were in the 80s with
partly cloudy skies for most of the morning, and the butterflies were
numerous. We started off in the center of the circular rose garden, where
a nice patch of Lantana gave us a chance to compare Sachem with Fiery
Skippers. It also gave us our first of many Silver-spotted Skippers for
the day as well as an opportunity to talk about duskywing identification
with a male Horace's present.
We then walked along a wide path with various plantings and found our only
Little Glassywing of the day, more Horace's Duskywings & Silver-spotted
Skippers, and Randy Emmitt spotted our first Eastern-tailed Blue nectaring
on Black-eyed Susans.
The terrace gardens were planted with lots of Lantana, Pentas, Verbena,
and other great nectar sources, and we spent nearly an hour working over
these plantings. Among others, we added Orange Sulphur, Gray Hairstreak,
American Lady, Variegated Fritillary, Common Buckeye, Common
Checkered-Skipper, and Ocola Skipper. Because of the Baptisia plantings,
we were able to compare Wild Indigo and Horace's Duskywings, noting the
smaller size and slightly different patterns of the Wild Indigos.
(Baptisia is a host-plant for Wild Indigo Duskywings.)
Perusing the lilypad ponds produced a plethora of Blue Dasher and Eastern
Amberwing dragonflies, and a little stream gave everyone great looks at a
Common Sanddragon, perched on a rock in the middle of the water. It then
flew over and perched on the walkway right in front of the group.
We explored a few other areas of the gardens, including taking a walk
around the duck pond where a Great Blue Heron sat on top of Wood Duck nest
box., and nearby, momma Mallards guarded their ducklings.
Thanks to everyone who attended, including some folks who drove in from
the NC mountains, and even a few folks came from Puerto Rico! (Well, ok,
they're studying at UNC, so they didn't JUST come for the butterfly walk.)
It was great, also, to put a face to some names that we previously only
knew from email. Below is the official list for the day, with approximate
numbers for each species. Surprisingly, we saw zero swallowtails,
although a couple folks reported seeing a worn Spicebush before the Walk
started, and I did see a Tiger Swallowtail crossing the road on my drive
home -- go figure!
Duke Gardens, Durham, NC 7/24/2005
Orange Sulphur (1)
Gray Hairstreak (5)
Summer Azure (2)
Variegated Fritillary (1)
Pearl Crescent (8)
American Lady (4)
Common Buckeye (2)
Red-spotted Purple (1)
Silver-spotted Skipper (60)
Horace's Duskywing (12)
Common Checkered-Skipper (4)
Clouded Skipper (1)
Fiery Skipper (35)
Little Glassywing (1)
Sachem (15)
Dun Skipper (1)
Ocola Skipper (1)
DAMSELS & DRAGONS
Variable Dancer (1)
Forktail sp. (1)
Swamp Darner (1)
Common Sanddragon (1)
Blue Dasher (100)
Slaty Skimmer (10)
Common Whitetail (5)
Widow Skimmer (4)
Eastern Amberwing (40)
Glider sp. (1)
Good Butterflying!
Jeff
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Jeffrey S. Pippen
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Rm A-241 LSRC Bldg, Box 90328
Duke University, Durham, NC 27708
PH: (919) 660-7278
http://www.duke.edu/~jspippen/nature.htm
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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