Catalina Scrapbook

Given an unexpected second chance, I waterfoiled again those 26 miles across the sea. Santa Catalina was a' waitin' for me, and I was ready to romance the island's special butterfly – again. The Avalon hairstreak is one of the most narrowly endemic species in the world. Unlike the first attempt, this time I hiked far up into the hills, up to the island crest, where I could see the Pacific on both sides. All alone up there, I gazed down on the harbor, teeming with lovers and tourists, their voices drifting up to me – the only one among all these pilgrims seeking little gray insects up on the island's heights.

At last, on a ridge out over the Palisades, looking down to green Kelpy Coves, I found strymon avalona! The mouse-gray males shot around the tops of the coffeeberry and manzanita and Catalina mahogany bushes. Their favored nectar, St. Catherine's Lace, spread a creamy canopy over the surrounding hills At one point, a trio of avalonas swirled a dervish with big, bright, American painted lady and a curious Costa's hummingbird: a stunning spectacle.

I was so enthralled that, even after jogging half the long switchbacks down the hot mountain to the sea, I missed the boat by five minutes.

Soaked and sore but happy, I took the last ferry off the island to somewhere else, never so happy for a five-buck Heineken – watching the porpoises leap their loops and a sooty shearwater overtake us at 30 knots, as Catalina receded into the sea mist & sunset.

June first, 2008

My first visit to the Northeast this year, occasioned by events at Yale, was met with -- what else? -- RAIN! A field trip to Yale Myers Forest was rich in redstarts and raindrops, bursting with birch-bark and devoid of butterflies. After yet another rare spring hairstreak hunt in South Jersey -- one blessed sunny day brought it out -- I aborted further plans for Florida, skedaddled home, and was glad to be there. We are encountering an unwanted reprise of cancer, and I needed to be home with Thea.

As she gained strength between surgery and chemotherapy, she urged me to get out at it. This allowed me to pursue the late spring butterflies of a later-than-usual spring in our own backyard Cascades.

For five days I skirted the heavy run-off between the volcanoes, one of these days actually sunny! I camped beside Stonehenge, on several kinds of public lands, and in a freeway rest area where I watched a drug deal go down as I prepared specimens.

I found Indra, swallowtails, Dark Wood Nymphs, Great Arctics, and Luci Blues -- in all, 21 species new for the year. This brings the total to 199 -- nearly a quarter of the fauna in five months.

But beyond the mere numbers, every day I've looked into the lives of creatures doing what they do to survive, doing the best they can in the face of a cold spring, a warming world, wildfire, and everything that we exact from the land. And sometimes, because of it -- like the fritillaries, skippers, and sulphurs, all drinking from a ditch beside an alfalfa field, moistened by irrigation sprinklers.

A moth with a poetic name, Euclidea cupidea -- and a big, rare Pine Snake, both cryptic against the South Jersey pinelands, (see photos) give me reason to continue this crazy caper, as does a Ceanothus Silk Moth -- her eggs mostly laid, her body spent on a country back road -- as much as all the butterflies in China.

Next: Southern Cal. Redux, Alaska, Illinois, and a great loop through the western ranges. And the beat goes on.

Photo: Pat Sutton

Photo: Pat Sutton

Photo: Pat Sutton

Now that the late, cool northern spring is thinking about settling into summer, the concern shifts from finding anything to finding those species that will not fly again this year: the vernal specialists with a single generation. As it happens, a number of these spring fliers belong to a group of butterflies know as hairstreaks -- "hair" for the tiny tails many kinds trail from their hindwings, "streak" for their stripes, or perhaps derived from their zippy flight. Many hairstreaks make their appearance early, then are seen no more.

I'd had good luck early on finding Henry's elfin in the Texas Hill Country, the Atala hairstreak and Sweadner's hairstreak deep into Florida, and frosted elfins along the Georgia border. Returning west, I was delighted to come across both the Siva hairstreak and the stunning, elusive Arizona hairstreak in the Magdalen Mountains of New Mexico -- the former apple-green, the latter like a bit of Navajo turquoise with vermilion inlay and sapphire dust sprinkled on top. Each species has its own particular habitat and larval host-plant -- oak, juniper, mistletoe for the Great Purple hairstreak -- and none can be taken for granted as far as appearance, flight, and finding them goes.

For almost half a century I'd longed to see the Sandia hairstreak -- discovered by a 4-H kid in 1959, and named and scientifically described by population prophet Paul Ehrlich. Goldy-green with a white stripe below, it blends perfectly with its larval host, beargrass (Noline) a narrow-leaved yucca. I found the plant, and the butterfly, in its type locality (= place of original collection and description) -- the Sandia Mountains, outside Albuquerque. What very different worlds: the beargrass mounts, the huge nearby casino, the city beyond. Hairstreaks, with their specific botanical needs and moist-spring ways, may be some of the first butterflies to feel the warming and drying, and to abandon historical ranges. But the Sandia is still there for now. Certain other species, even brighter green, have already much contracted.

A few days later, when I took the ferry 26 miles across the sea to Catalina Island, the Avalon hairstreak was not there -- at least I failed to find it. One of the narrowest endemics in the world, it flies nowhere else. The prolonged southwestern drought -- though not apparent this past January in San Diego! -- has affected many plants and creatures, as the much-depleted monarchs showed. But the Avalon does have a later generation, and I'll look again. Meanwhile, its nearest relative the Gray hairstreak, was dancing by the dozens in the late-day sun on baked rocky hilltops in the Mojave Desert. But in stark contrast to the highly restricted Avalon, the Gray is a great generalist -- common, widespread, and nowhere a surprise to see, all season long.

The hairstreak genus Mitoura, however, feeders on evergreens and mistletoes, are specialists that must be seen in spring, and only in certain places. I'd hoped to spy the one known as Muir's hairstreak as close as I could to Muir Woods in Marin County -- in a grove of Sargent Cypress high on Mt. Tamalpais. So forty years after the Dharma Bums circumnavigated Tamalpais, I sought John O'Mountains' butterfly above "his" woods. Mitoma muiri didn't show. But a couple of days later, high in the coast range of Mendocino National Forest, on a ridgeline thick with McNab's cypress, I found myself in the flashing company of scores of M. muiri, and camped among them. It was in the deep satisfaction of this hard-won encounter, and all the others, that I bumped down the long dusty road and up the longer concrete stripe of I-5 -- many weeks, many miles, many butterflies since Lodi.

And there was one more hairstreak to be seen before the cold rain of a Washington La Niña May settled in: flitting over the kinnikinnick among camas, violets, and shooting stars, the hazelnut-and-frost mites called hoary elfins -- some of the loveliest and most ephemeral of the hairstreaks of spring.

Photo: David G. James

Carrizozo, New Mexico
April 19, 2008

After Okefenokee, and weeks of the hot and tropic lowlands, the mountains of Georgia called. Sweet relief of altitude and cool -- but the southernmost Appalachians were clothed in cloud & rain. West though Tennessee, I happened upon the spring whites and marbles I'd been especially seeking. Then, stopping off for the free morning hour at Graceland to deliver his copy of Orion to Elvis, I saw no butterflies except for a graffito on the sidewalk. But dozens of goldfinches crowded a low marshy spot in the nicely unkempt lawn. But I was eager to flee Memphis -- like Mobile, still a city -- for the Mississippi Delta. Most of the Great River Road ran through a chemical barren of cotton field, but I found deep and wild canebrakes where certain rare butterflies dwell.

The only Delta blues I heard were Robert Johnson on my cassette player and Lightning Hopkins in the cultural center in an almost flooded, almost abandoned Civil War town. But from Georgia thorugh Alabama, Mississippi, across Louisiana and into Texas, I heard echoes of the voices of the transported Cherokee, the cottonbound slaves. Now one sees neo-plantation extrava-mansions that make Graceland look quite modest and remarkably tasteful. And, tin-and-tarpaper shacks -- often just a mosquito's whine apart.

Rough green snake in attitude of mutual regard (photograph by Alana Edwards).

Zebra swallowtail at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park (photograph, Alana Edwards).

With friends on the Anhinga Trail, Royal Palm, Everglades. Bob is the one on the right.

A bottle of beer, a beach of shells, a sunset, and thee.
Photo credit: Linnaea Pyle

It's true! He is -- and there, and everywhere. More than 10,000 miles so far -- but in an old Civic instead of an old red truck. Long may she run!

As for this Robert, he began his business at 9 with a little fruit stand, bought his farm at 14 -- and he's still here!

The best key lime milk shake conceivable -- I had two!

A dental emergency drew me to ultra-affluent Naples, Florida for a day, and to this pub afterward. Not exactly a NW brewpub, and Florida lager is no IPA -- but better than Novocain. And the kind dentist, Dr Alan Rembos, tipped me off to the Crooked Garden in Pelican Preserve, Fort Myers -- one of the best I've ever seen. Amid oceans of nectar and a flurry of butterflies, I saw 12 species, including queens, zebras, and orange-barred sulphurs the size of small birds.

Sanibel Islands, 14 March
Biologist and writer David Campbell kindly lent me his house and car on Sanibel, Florida's famous "shell island." Much of it is the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. I fondly remember Orion's Forgotten Language Tour stop here, and saw our signed poster at the nature center today -- Janisse Ray, Nels Nelson, Pattiann Rogers, Peter Matheissen, & self. Thea flew out to join me here for a week. Phenomenal birds, herps, plants, and -- yes, butterflies! -- at the Corkscrew Swamp Preserve. Big Cypress, & Everglades. And the storied shells on the beaches here!

Still cool & showery, so mosquitoes few -- but a sufficiency of Lepidoptera. I feel I'm really on my way!

Heading south again, I came right back into another series of heavy winter storms off the Pacific. The third night out, after checking sedums for absent elfins in a patch of rare sunshine in the Siskiyous, I was quite literally "stuck in Lodi again." (The first time was in '69 or so, in a $2.50 hotel room replete with bedbugs.) Nor were there many butterflies in the sprayed-and-paved Central Valley, though I did scare up a few in rags of habitat in the San Joaquin; and a couple more in Death Valley, where the post-rain wild flowers were blinding – especially the Desert Gold, a bright yellow-rayed sunflower with orange discs.

Most of my transect of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas has been a matter of creosote bush and yucca, cold wind, dust and desiccation, with scarcely a drop of nectar. Tomorrow I'll hit the Gulf and follow it to Florida, to warmth, moisture, blossom, and butterflies. Soon I'll be swimming in them. I should treasure these weeks when every single butterfly matters immeasurably, when I may, as Robinson Jeffers writes in "November Surf," rediscover the value of rarity.

In a couple of days I'll skirt Mobile. Road-gods willing, I won't get "stuck inside of Mobile" too, with the Memphis blues or not.

Shelter from the storm –
-- had an almost-working 1954 jukebox, with "Peggy Sue" – my favorite!

There was a cardinal -- CARDINAL -- singing outside my room this morning (first bed in a week -- $27 -- in this dry weed of a Texas town*. That, the nearly flat Continental Divide, and the Central Time Zone -- as well as my petrified posterior -- tell me that we've covered considerable distance.

Through driving snow just above Las Vegas, snow on the Chiricahuas, snow in the Pinalenos. Finally, the sun, in Texas -- and the wind, and the drought. Powdermilk and I press on.

* But actually quite charming in the middle -- old limestone courthouse, library, with butterflies out front.

Campbell, California, January 31, 2008
And so ends the first month, an unusually adverse one for butterflies in S. Cal. Of it, I could write an "Essay on Absence" -- but really, isn't that as it should be, for butterflies, in January, while we still have a winter worthy of the name?

A few species, at least, have appeared in canyons above Malibu on rare sunny mornings.

Camped here [Big Sur postcard] at Bixby Bridge, where Jack Kerouac hung out, befriended a donkey and Steller's Jays, suffered DT's, took dictation from the waves, and wrote it all in his funny, dark, shocking, and too-seldom read book, Big Sur. I found Veined Whites & Satyr Anglewings here.

Best garlic grouper [Marisa's card] in the Tijuana River Estuary! (Where I became very well acquainted with the Border Patrol)

Then [monarch photo] down-coast to th best of the monarch colony this poor winter, at Esalen. And [Desert Tower postcard] across to the deserts Anza Borrego, Yula, Salton, And borderlands, where I saw all manner of strange and wonderful fauna. But butterflies, in the continuing spate of cold, wet weather, were not among the sightings.

The grace note of a hibernating California tortoise shell on a New Year's morning in Gray's River gave way to a rigorous passage downcoast. Powdermilk and I windsurfed and hydroplaned 101 south more than drove it, practically enlisting in the wild wind and rain.

Arriving in Eureka, I went to ground here—solely for shelter, of course.

Highway 101 through the coast redwoods alternates between freeway and narrow forest lane. Power was out, limbs were down, and almost no one was afoot—or a'wheel. A rare chance to see the redwood virtually on my own, the road deserted, the night sky entirely dark. It reminded me of visiting the ruins of Tikal, Guatemala, in mid-September, 2001—we had it all to ourselves then, too. Except that time, there were also butterflies!

Actually, when we were there [in the drive-through], it was pitch-black & flooded—we barely made it out.

January 11, 2008, Campbell, California We were the first auto to make it through from Willets to Fort Bragg, the narrow, loopy route of highway 1 littered with redwood blowdown. At last reaching the coast, I took shelter and perhaps a pint—here where the estimable Red Seal Ale is made; then camped in the parking lot, and in the morning, made my way to Mendocino, hiking dunes, eying cypresses. But—and this is a particular hazard of Northern California, especially in the winter—good beer proved much more abundant than butterflies.

As far as I could see, Monarchs were absent from historic sights in Mendocino and Marin. But at last one little cluster, about the size of a basketball, turned up at Ardenwood, an East Bay historic farm. 10 days, 2 species—onward!

Leaf-text: A red gum leaf of the sort the Monarchs of Ardenwood depended from.

Dear Friends,

This may be the sole typed message from the Butterfly Big Year, as I am not yet quite away. All is not in readiness. Today I am liquidating and shutting down my e-mail, as promised in my previous “Tangled Bank.” Tomorrow I will finish dealing with the outstanding paper correspondence—not necessarily replying, mind you. Then a day for packing Powdermilk. The sleeping compartment is almost set, adapting the former backseat for a longitudinal cot. New speakers ($25) for the original (1982) radio and cassette player. New tires, windshield, timing belt; rear wheel bearings packed, brakes, muffler, holes patched, et cetera. Road atlas. Traveling library. Nets checked out, caterpillar containers, a rag-bag of clothes to be progressively shed as I drift southward. Pots and pans and oat bran and ancient stove with fresh blue canisters of Camping Gaz. There should be just room for me.

Gray’s River is gelid with rain and sleet, that’s the only word. K-M Mountain to the east of us is snowy and treacherous—eight accidents on Christmas Day, when Thea and I ventured across it for Yulish cheer on Puget Island and in Skamokawa with friends, and made it back again. My plan is to head west instead, to cut straight for the coast, and then to follow it all the way to Tijuana Bay. With stops. I can’t wait for the first sight and feel of the sun. I hope I won’t see snow up close until I go to Hudson Bay next November. I am not taking chains. Butterflies do not tend to fly where chains are required.

My first real objective is to immerse myself among the overwintering monarchs on the California coast. They might become Butterfly Numero Uno. But who can say that I won’t find an overwintering anglewing in some barn or woodpecker hole along the way; or a cabbage white caterpillar pinking the broccoli leaves in the big organic garden I plan to visit for provisions at Beaver on the Oregon coast? And yes, I will count caterpillars—if I can ID them with confidence. I’ll take some with me to rear along the way. The NABA (formerly Xerces) 4th of July Butterfly Counts do not count caterpillars as species, which strikes me as silly. Birders certainly count chicks and nonbreeding immatures on their Christmas counts. After all, the adult butterfly is only one-quarter of the overall animal. So eggs, larvae, and chrysalides are all fair game, if alive, and if I can be sure of their species. They can be just as beautiful and fascinating as their alter egos, and even more elusive.

So here I go! I have just received a wonderful quatrain by Anita Boyle, sent by her partner, James Bertolino—two fine Washington poets. This will be my mantra for the coming journey:

Never say don’t.
Don’t say never.
Live forever.
Don’t say you won’t.”

—Anita Boyle

Next you’ll hear from me may be runes scratched on a scallop shell, or grooves in a piece of rubber from the edge of the road. Onward to ought-eight!

Bob