So I am coming up against autumn, and my chances of reaching my goal of 500 species are narrowing. If any place will get me there, it will be the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where (I am told) two species new to the United States turned up last week. So I will continue to haunt the Valley, in between trips out.

One of these, back to Florida for pay-the-bills lectures and intensive outings, brought me in contact with half-a-dozen new tallies in some still-flowered habitat remnants (see Linda Cooper's fine photos). One sight I will never forget: dozens of Florida Atala butterflies -- brilliant sapphire and vermillion on black velvet -- fluttering all over a tall native lantana at the Deering Estate in Miami. This butterfly was once thought to be extinct!

Pine Rockland Habitat -- haunt of Meske's and Dotted Skippers

Caro

There is something about a friendship from early childhood – 55 years in this case -- that nothing else quite touches. Jack Jeffers and I lived across the street from one another throughout our school days -- 1 to 12. We became best friends and butterfly buddies, heading out to the wilds of the High Line Canal with our nets all spring and summer long. So naturally, during the Butterfly Big Year, I wanted to visit Jack and to re-visit our days as kid lepidopterists.

I took the train (the Silver Star) from Del Ray Beach in Florida to Raleigh, North Carolina, where Jack is retired with his young family, Loreé and Jake, and his golf clubs. Between ping-pong, pool, and a pumpkin-carving party with Jake and their extended family, Jack and I headed out to fulfill a long-held ambition: a day swinging golf clubs, and one swinging butterfly nets.

I at least struck the ball most of the time, and Jack had not lost his groove with the net. We drove to the North Carolina Sand Hills, where we sought the Yehl Skipper and White-M hairstreak. These we did not find in the autumnal woods of little nectar. But we did encounter 14 species of butterflies, and reconnected in their pursuit across half a century of different lives, different strokes. Different lives, but united in what Nabokov called the "ecstasy of being among rare butterflies and their food plants," or something close to that. And it was.

RMP

Arogos Skipper (Atrytone arogos) on Carphephorus corymbosus (Paint Brush)

Lopsided Indiangrass (Sorghastrum secundum)

Meske’s Skipper (Hesperia meskei) nectaring on Liatris species (Gay Feather or Blazing Star)

Pine Lily or Catesby’s Lily (Lilium catesbaei)

same lily with Longleaf Pines in background (Pinus palustris)

Mid-October
En route, S. Texas—N. Florida

It took me three weeks to drive from home to the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. On the way, I prowled Nevada ridges, Arizona canyons, and New Mexico borderlands. I moved a dozen black-tailed rattlesnakes off a lonely road one night, the Border Patrol investigating me almost every time; and I watched a roadrunner pecking big grasshoppers off the grills of autos at the Basin in Big Bend. Butterflies increased all along the way. At last I reached the storied Valley -- the almost-ruined Texan tropics, where reserves and butterfly gardens abound among the sprawl.

For several days now, I have reveled and sweated my way from one butterfly hot-spot to another. Yesterday, in the western valley, master-birder/butterflier Benton Basham (who first broke 700 species on a birding Big Year) guided me to flowery spot after spot. We saw 79 species, almost 1/10 of the American fauna, 8 of which were new for my own Big Year. All day, we swam through high heat, humidity, chiggers, sand burrs, and 10's of thousands of butterflies. I wish every one could have seen those two massive Malachites together on purple mistflower, and the five species of impressive long-tailed skippers. I’ll be back to the valley for two more periods. Meanwhile, here is a collage of a few of the prominent species. RMP.

These species are, in order:
Pixie
White Peacock
Amymone
Malachite
Queen
Snout (the most abundant of all -- millions)!

This butterfly is certainly not here -- it is South American. But another indigo & black beauty, the Mexican Bluewing, abounds!

(top)
I found this card floating on the surface of a stream near Big Bend Nat’l Park. Quite

(bottom)
appropriate, as it turns out, since it was at Sotol viewpoint between Panther Junction and Cottonwood Camp on the Rio Grande where I found both the Chinati and Fulvia Checkerspots -- two uncommon beauties. Chinati is a specialty of the Chisos Mtns.

Text here

October 3, 2008
I love this old hotel, especially for the splendid windows, which depict the flora and topography of the Sonoran Desert. The scarlet flowers of the ocotillo are especially fine.

Otherwise, the "grand" part is a bit past. But the place (and this whole border town) exists in a time warp. You wouldn't be surprised if Pancho Villa charged in the front door and up the marble staircase, guns blazing, as he once did.

As I work through the last of the several sky islands I've visited here in Arizona -- the Chiricahuas -- I am thinking a lot about phenology: the progression, or procession, of natural events through the year. Without a time machine or the ability to disapparate, or at least a big budget (and appetite) for aeroplanes and rental cars, I don't know how anyone would see all the American butterflies in a year, or even most of them. Each species has its own particular flight period, often keyed to the phenologies of their larval host plants and adult nectar sources, in turn militated by patterns of precipitation and temperature. So in order to see the full fauna in a given area, you'd have to return several times -- and then too, the emergence of a given species can vary by weeks, depending on the weather.

So, in short, I got here a little too late for the whole, rich roster of roadside skippers. But by doing so, I arrived just right for the amazing Giant Skippers in the Huachucas, not too late for the Red-rimmed Satyr, and just in time for Terloot's Pine White. So the phenology is a keen challenge -- and will remain so, on into Texas.

The great naturalist-photographer Bob Behrstock came afield with me in the Huachucas -- his photos show two of the big skippers.

Both photos below by R.A. Behrstock/Naturewide Images:
Dull Firetip (two crops). Fort Huachuca. A very worn individual we were lucky to see as the flight is about over.

Photo below by R.A. Behrstock/Naturewide Images:
Huachuca Giant-Skipper. Fort Huachuca.

Photo below:
Bob and Bob Behrstock in Karen LeMay and Behrstock's back yard.

September 24, 2008,
along the Lower Colorado River —

From the already autumnal cool of the lower Columbia to the evil heat of the lower Colorado (a 50 degree rise), I've driven the near-endless length of Nevada to reach the butterfly riches of the Huachucas, the Chiricahuas, and the Davis Mtns., Big Bend, and ultimately, the Lower Rio Grande in S. Texas. Having pretty much exhausted the North, I find more and more flying the farther I case the season -- at least in the mountains. In this bleak and torrid place, only a drooping roadrunner.

Longing for the Boreal,
Bob

Bob and Dr. Boyce Drummond at the Bucksnort Saloon, Sphinx Park, Colorado.

Mead’s Wood Nymph, Deckers, Colorado

The photo below is by Jim Wiker:

Hunting pearly eyes and lacewing skippers deep in the giant canebrakes, near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Temperature and humidity both in high nineties. This is also where I picked up a few dozen chiggers.

And the photo below is by Boyce A. Drummond

Pawnee montane skipper (Hesperia leonardus montana) on gayfeather (Liatris punctata) that Bob saw in Trumbull Colorado with Boyce Drummond on September 1, 2008.

Boulder, en route to Gray's River
The latter half of August has been a giant crazy-eight, a last-gasp effort to find Northern species before Autumn's embrace -- if Kentucky can be called Northern! I began by driving Powdermilk through Idaho and Montana, seeking Christina Sulphurs and Hayden's Ringlets; then E. Utah for Nokomis Fritillaries and big Yuma Skippers. From Denver, I flew to Maine to track down Dorcas and Bog Coppers, white admirals, Atlantis Fritillaries… and to hear John Piot's 40-drum steel band, Flash in the Pan. Then to the subtropical heat and rain of Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio and Mississippi meet in bald cypress swamps and canebrakes. This paper plate led to my rendezvous with Jim Wiker & Sally Agnew. Jim guided me deep into wet habitats replete with uncommon satyrs, skippers, and carnivorous, Halloween-hued Harvesters. Onward in the rented Bronze Copper from one end of Kentucky to another, past "butterflies already yellow with August," as Ezra Pound had it, to meet stunning Diana. Back to Colorado by rail, WY, NE, SD, home -- and summer is over.

When I returned to Illinois, it wasn't for the scenes on the reverse, but for this one. Here I witnessed three (all 3) kinds of pearly eyes sipping sap at the same tree, at the same time, in a light rain at dusk. In that same canebrake I collected over 100 chiggers -- all over my body. It was just about worth it!

Weaving the ridges of the KY-VA-WV borders, in deep Appalachia, I beheld the enormities of mountaintop removal for coal, and wound through one sorry little coal town and fouled stream after another. But, it was the way of life, as logging has been where I live. I paused in Matewan, scene of the labor battle leading to the infamous "massacre" of miners by company goons. This is also the heart of Hatfield-McCoy country. "Bygones are bygones," I was told by Cathy McCoy, who then went on to tell me of the massacre of McCoys by the Hatfields. My overall impression of this land, where towns are named Majestic, Lovely, and Beauty, is one of a conflicted landscape --

and a people not without their own conflicts. But also a place of courtesy, difficult and distinctive dialect, and actual beauty in the hills, when they escape the coal-shovel. And, I saw one of the great butterfly spectacles of the entire year here in Matewan. It was on the site of yet another feud -- a rip-rapped riverbank slope above the Tug Fork, where Buddleia davidii (butterfly bush) and kudzu were struggling for dominance. There, an astonishing array of butterflies thronged the purple Buddleia: hundreds of swallowtails, fritillaries, ladies, skippers, and others -- 21 species in all. They included scores of big, flashy silver-spotted skippers, whose larvae -- with their red, yellow-spotted heads like a coal miner's hard-hat and headlamp -- quite happily feed on kudzu.

Though I spent most nights of my Appalachian swing in my rental car, the Bronze Copper, I did splurge for a night (and a desperately needed shower) here at this inn. Once a state-of-the-art company town school, it held children until 1992. (The school up the road was for "colored" kids.) It has since become a pleasant hostelry, situated hard below Big Black Mountain, the highest point in Kentucky, and a classic locale for the big, black and blue fritillary known as Diana -- my reason for coming.

And another great old inn: Glen Isle Lodge, in Bailey, Colorado, type locality for Mead's Wood Nymph. My mother, brother, and I stayed here in 1964 to seek that butterfly, and I also had my first honeymoon here in 1966. Glen-Isle is essentially, amazingly unchanged -- right down to the proprietor, Mrs. Barbara Tripp, who was there on both those earlier visits! In nearby S. Platte Canyon, with biologist Boyce Drummond, I saw the Fed. endangered b'fly, the Pawnee Montane Skipper. And after the field, Antler Ale at the Bucksnort Saloon in Sphinx Park, a pink-granite Brigadoon in a narrow Front Range Canyon.

Late July and early August have been a time to be at home with Thea, as she cruises through her chemo, and with my grandchildren, before 2/3 of them moved to Guadalajara (see Thea's photo).

But I also got up into the mountains of home several times, cherry-picking the butterflies of late summer. The Olympics (Washington's, not Beijing's) displayed superb wildflowers. But it was as if a butterfly-specific neutron bomb had struck – I did not see one, where hundreds, or thousands, usually fly! One fritillary caterpillar crossed the trail to Hurricane Hill, and so this strange, wet, cold summer proceeds.

RMP tracking ringlets with stepson Tom Hellyer, and grandchildren Cristina and David Hellyer, and Francis VanBockel. Photo by Thea.

But the Cascades were better, sunnier, and fairly prolific with frits and skippers, nymphs and sulphurs, checkers & blues. By the grace of happenstance, on Slate Peak in the Pasayten Wilderness Area, I ran into my friend Dave Nunnalee. Along with entomologist David James, he is working on a book on Washington's butterfly eggs, larvae, and pupae. Dave was hunting ova of the Arctic Blue. We shared a splendid encounter with the rare and beautiful Astarte Fritillary (see his fine photographs) and also put up a Vidler's Alpine among the parti-colored scatter of alpine wildflowers.

And thanks to that chance field meeting, I enjoyed a bed and a good meal that night, as Dave's guest, as well as his good company. And what company could be better than that of a wildflowers, butterflies, and a curious, observant, and simpatico naturalist? Except maybe the grandchildren.

Below: The very rare Astarte Fritillary at Slate Peak, Washington. Photos: David Nunnalee

Ditto for another trip to the hills with my master-dentist and good field-buddy, Dr. David Branch. We began here at the Cottage for sustenance, then ranged into canyons as dry as the Olympics were wet. Nonetheless, we found my special quarry: pine white, zerene fritillary, mariposa copper, and half-moon hairstreak. Next: points E.

Warming Days of July
Swede Park, Gray's River

It's delicious to be home for a bit between the High Sierra / High Rockies and the Olympics / North Cascades. True, there's not much flying here compared to those butterfly-rich ranges, where I hugely enjoyed high times, among montane specialties such as Behr's Sulphurs, Magdalena Alpines, and Melissa Arctics. Still, it was fine today to walk in our hills of home with Thea, recovered from a tough bout of chemotherapy, watching big cherry-spotted Clodius Parnassians.

I've been especially grateful lately for our public lands -- BLM, NPS, USFWS, and especially USFS, which welcome butterfly nets. There's nothing less helpful to the peripatetic naturalist than a barbed-wire fence with a big "NO TRESPASSING" sign. I prefer Woody Guthrie's little-known verse: "But on the other side, it didn't say nothin', that side was meant for you and me." Traveling this land as I am, I become more appreciative than ever of those lands held in trust -- and in access -- for us all.

Thea just came in with a big bowl of raspberries -- I've got to go.

My visit to Colorado's eastern slope was hosted and facilitated by dear friends Jan and Amy Chu of Boulder, whose good photos grace this entry. We prowled the Gambel's Oak Country to see the extraordinary, amethyst-purple Colorado Hairstreak, the State Butterfly.

[top] -- A few places I've been hanging out lately, along the butterfly highway.

[bottom] -- And a good laugh! Well, they can't always get these right.

And a few artifacts from the road --

Baltimore Pin, Illinois

Leaves from the Thunder Tree, Highline Canal, Colorado

[left feather] -- from a Rocky Mountain Goshawk

[right feather] Steller's Jay feather, and a Florida pea

Photos below by Janet Chu

Magdalena Alpine butterfly on the nose of Amy Chu

"Reserved for Bob," Idaho Springs

Edwards' Fritillary female, about to be released

RMP & Janet Chu at the Thunder Tree, High Line Canal, 33 years after first butterfly count there

Alturas, California, Looking back to Illinois

So this is the very stuff—the plant known as The Noble Hop (Humulus lupulus) -- that serves as the principle bittering agent in beer.

But it is not only lepidopterists who take refreshment and sustenance from this handsome herb. My guide, friend, and colleague in Illinois, Jim Wiker, is the leading student of the pretty and fascinating moths of the genus Papaipema. The caterpillars of these moths bore into the roots of particular plants -- ferns, grasses, wild indigo, spiderwort, or many others, depending upon their species. While we were in the field searching for Baltimore Checkerspots (which we saw -- a great lifer for me!), he found a caterpillar in this very vine. He will rear it in his lab at home -- he's discovered that all the specialized "paps" will feed on carrots in captivity!

(Left side text with arrow pointing to plant): Here's where the larva was feeding in its cubbyhole:

(Bottom left text): Hop Azure butterflies lay their eggs on Humulus, and we encountered lots of Eastern Commas, foxy-hued butterflies whose old-fashioned and charming name is the Hop Merchant.

At this estimable brewpub-cum-alehouse in Rockford, I recuperated from a steamy, ticky, chiggery week afield -- or was I preparing for it? -- with a pint or two of an excellent bitter IPA actually named Humulus Lupulus. Thus bolstered, Jim and I explored native habitat remnants including dry hill prairies and wet sedge meadows. The latter appear to be holding their special skippers for now, but the former are losing theirs at a tragic rate. For example, the large and striking Ottoe Skipper seems to be gone from Iowa, and at a reserve where it was formerly abundant, we found only one -- Jim thinks it might be the last he'll see there. Ditto for other prairie species. Suspected agents: overzealous burning, B.t. corn.

Pledge the Butterfly-a-thon! (All the women already have.)