Folks,
After several years of cloudy days, afternoon showers, high humidity, and hot/windless afternoons, we were finally rewarded with a perfect day for butterflying!! It not only increased the numbers, but it really felt good!
As temperatures rose from 65 to 90 under a cloudless sky, eight of us* spent from 9 am until 5:30 pm counting butterflies in northern Iredell County. Mostly on the Allison Woods Estate and along the Iredell County Greenway, which has recovered well from the disastrous flood of a few years ago.
Most spectacular was a 50 ft tall wall of blooming kudzu in full sun on the side of the Allison Woods airstrip, alive with butterflies, although the long stretch of Joe Pye and Ironweed in full bloom on the Greenway was also impressive.
17 Eastern Tiger Swallowtail [and 1 caterpillar]
1 Spicebush Swallowtail
1 Cabbage White
7 Clouded Sulphur
1 Orange Sulphur
37 Cloudless Sulphur
4 Sleepy Orange
3 Gray Hairstreak
1 Red-Banded Hairstreak
13 Eastern-Tailed Blue
15 Azure
7 Variegated Fritillary
19 Silvery Checkerspot
7 Pearl Crescent
3 Questionmark
1 Red Admiral
36 Common Buckeye
11 Red-Spotted Purple
6 Hackberry Emperor
1 Tawny Emperor
2 Northern Pearly-eye
1 Creole Pearly-eye
206 Carolina Satyr
7 Monarch [and 21 caterpillars]
28 Silver-Spotted Skipper
1 Horaces Duskywing
1 Common-Checkered Skipper
1 Common Sootywing
8 Clouded Skipper
2 Least Skipper
28 Crossline Skipper
3 Whirlabout
2 Northern Broken-Dash
3 Little Glassywing
537 Sachem
4 Delaware Skipper
46 Zabulon Skipper
1 Dun Skipper [and 1 dead Dun]
2 Ocola Skipper
39 Species
1074 Adult butterflies
* Bob & Nancy Baldwin, Charlie Cameron, Elizabeth Riggs, Lislott Harberts, Jean Cheendrlek, Peggy Johnson, and Jim Nottke
Jim Nottke
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