Butterfliers,
Yesterday (8/16/2009) the 11th annual NABA Durham
Butterfly Count was
conducted under warm temps and partly sunny to mostly
cloudy skies. We
had a very successful day, tallying 58 butterfly species
and 2741
individuals. We were above our eleven year average species
diversity for
this count (56) but well below the average number of
individuals (3702)
despite having near average number of party hours of
participation (29;
average is 30). We had 6 parties in the field and one
garden watcher at
the Museum of Life and Science. (BTW, if you live in
Durham and watched
and tallied butterflies in your garden yesterday, you may
submit your
results to me and I can include them in the official Count --
let me know
by Wednesday as I'll be submitting the official results to NABA
then!)
Great Finds:
Amazingly both Will Cook's party and Randy
Emmitt's party found singleton
Mourning Cloaks this year, a first for the
Durham Count because that
species is normally aestivating this time of year!
Highs and Lows:
There has been some talk on various butterfly list serves
that tiger
swallowtail numbers are way down this year. The Durham tally was
indeed
well below average, however, we were not near our all-time low, which
illustrates the point that butterfly numbers (like most insects) may vary
naturally and dramatically from year to year and that folks generally
needn't worry when they casually observe "numbers are very low this year"
of
their favorite butterfly! For the record, while several species were
below
average, we had no "bad misses," and we only had all-time lows for
two
species: Black Swallowtail (tied the low of 9), and Ocola Skipper
(tied the
low of 1). We had only one all-time high, also a tie, for
Zabulon Skippers
at 148.
Many thanks to the participants: Brian Bockhahn, Will Cook, Randy
Emmitt,
Bonnie Forbes, Tom Krakauer, Harry LeGrand, Meg Millard, Jeff
Pippen, Lynn
Richardson, Richard Stickney, and Bud Webster. Hope you can
join us
next year!
Here is the cumulative tally:
8 Pipevine
Swallowtail
1 Zebra Swallowtail
9 Black Swallowtail
65 E. Tiger
Swallowtail
38 Spicebush Swallowtail
2 Cabbage White
1 Clouded Sulphur
18 Orange Sulphur
25 Cloudless Sulphur
107 Sleepy Orange
16 Gray
Hairstreak
1 Red-banded Hairstreak
278 Eastern Tailed-Blue
39 Summer
Azure
3 American Snout
50 Variegated Fritillary
8 Great Spangled
Fritillary
5 Silvery Checkerspot
107 Pearl Crescent
2 Mourning Cloak
16 Question Mark
8 Eastern Comma
6 American Lady
1 Painted Lady
8
Red Admiral
229 Common Buckeye
58 Red-spotted Purple
18 Viceroy
16
Hackberry Emperor
9 Tawny Emperor
8 Northern Pearly-eye
11 Appalachian
Brown
6 Gemmed Satyr
287 Carolina Satyr
8 Common Wood-Nymph
33
Monarch
159 Silver-spotted Skipper
14 Hoary Edge
2 Southern Cloudywing
21 Horace's Duskywing
1 Zarucco Duskywing
4 Wild Indigo Duskywing
46
Com. Checkered-Skipper
4 Common Sootywing
22 Swarthy Skipper
80 Clouded
Skipper
46 Least Skipper
88 Fiery Skipper
4 Tawny-edged Skipper
45
Crossline Skipper
57 Southern Broken-Dash
9 Northern Broken-Dash
42
Little Glassywing
412 Sachem
3 Delaware Skipper
148 Zabulon Skipper
2 Dion Skipper
29 Dun Skipper
1 Ocola Skipper
Good
Butterflying,
Jeff
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Jeffrey S.
Pippen
Nicholas School of the Environment
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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