Wings and colours on a butterfly count

It is more or less the peak of butterfly season, which is why most butterfly counts take place in July. I only participate in one, the Rondeau area butterfly count. Heat and humidity are not my idea of the time to do lots of field work. So why am I located here in the extreme southwestern part of Ontario, which is undoubtedly one of the worst places in Canada for those conditions these days? Good question, but that is a topic for another time. But I limit myself to the one butterfly count, and on occasion I have declined even that when the conditions are extreme.

Fortunately the couple of days before the Rondeau count as well as the day of, were some of the cooler days we had for awhile. Not cool, as they were still slightly above normal, but it was a relative cool.

I hadn't done a lot of looking for butterflies leading up to the count, as my focus in recent weeks have been on those other members of the lepidopterans, the moths which enables me to do field work at a slightly cooler time of day. So I ventured out to the park a day or so before the Rondeau count, to see what was happening and to brush up on whatever butterflies I could find.

There was lots of Bottlebrush Grass along the trails, its name obvious due to its shape.

Butterfly Milkweed was abundant along the open edges of the forest. But virtually no butterflies at the time I was there.

In the damper edges of the forest there were scattered clumps of this next wildflower, Fringed Loosestrife.

It is easily identified by its bright yellow, down facing flowers.

It gets the 'Fringed' part of its name due to the little hair-like fringes along the leaf stem.

Dragonflies, such as this meadowhawk species, like using it as a resting place.

I got a few butterflies over the course of my hike, but not many, which did not bode well for the upcoming count.

My area for the butterfly count is not in Rondeau, as others have it covered, but in various places in the Erieau and Blenheim areas. I usually start off on the McGeachy Pond trail, then head over to the Rail Trail before meeting up with Steve, Keith and Jim to check out a grassy/shrubby field closer to Blenheim where we usually get a good diversity. Then we split up again, and I check out some wide roadsides and railroad edges in hopes that the vegetation has not been cut and there are flowering plants attracting butterflies. I check out a few other places along the way. In general it isn't the best habitat for diversity or rarities, but it gets the count circle covered and adds to the overall numbers for the day.

When I started at McGeachy Pond, it was early enough that there hadn't been many others on the trail. Eastern Cottontails were scattered here and there, but quickly moved on when humans arrived.

And dragonflies.....the place was a flutter with them. I wasn't counting, but there must have been at least a thousand of them along this trail and the Rail Trail. The vast majority of them were Blue Dashers.

There were a few butterflies, but I only got about 7 species in the first hour or so. One of the highlights was this Question Mark, the only one of its kind I saw on the day.

Red Admirals were a little more plentiful.

I got a couple of these Monarch look-alikes, the Viceroy.

Cabbage Whites were quite abundant, as usual.

There used to be a nice Butterfly Bush at edge of the parking lot at the west end of the trail, which, if it was in flower, always had an excellent variety of butterflies. Unfortunately over the last couple of years it has died out for some reason. Maybe snow and ice effects in the winter, or high water in the last couple of years, or something else. Regardless, it is no longer there, so it makes this trail far less interesting for butterflies.

Being right along the pond/wetland, there were lots of Pickerelweed just coming into their prime.

There were actually quite a few flowering plants scattered along these two trails, but except for Common Milkweed, most were not native such as this Catnip....

....and Butter-and-eggs, which seemed a bit early in the season to see it in flower. I generally consider it a late summer bloomer.

Common Burdock was not common, but scattered.

Pokeweed was just starting to come into flower. It is a native species, and in a few weeks will be laden with luscious looking dark blue berries. But looks can be deceiving. While they are popular with birds, they are poisonous to some extent for humans.

I met up with the other three amigos at the grassy/shrubby field, which over the years has become much more shrubby and less hospitable for butterflies. Nevertheless, we did find some of the faithful ones, including lots of this Common Wood-nymph.

We only saw this single Little Wood-satyr.....

....and just this one Eastern Tailed Blue.

Probably the highlight, amongst the variety of butterflies we saw in this one location, was this Banded Hairstreak, the only hairstreak I saw all day, although the others had more success in their other area.

I continued on to the other places in my part of the territory. The most interesting place was along a wide section between a seldom used railroad and a forest, where some parts were wet to support things like Swamp Milkweed. It turned out that this milkweed was about in its prime, and certainly a popular flower for various invertebrate critters. Monarchs were at all of the places I covered on this count, but often were in flight only. The Swamp Milkweed here gave at least a few, a reason to rest and feed.

Clearly they had been here before, as this fairly large Monarch caterpillar on Swamp Milkweed attestst to.

A species I don't often get in my area is this next one, a Dun Skipper.

Another skipper, more to be expected in my area, was this next one, a Delaware Skipper.

There were other critters using the milkweed, including this pair of Banded Longhorn Beetles attempting to ensure another generation would be present.

There were several members of the Lepidopteran family around, but on the moth side of things. I saw at least a couple Nessus Sphinx moths, but did not get photos, as well as half a dozen of these Snowberry Clearwings where I had more success.

This Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle was burrowing into the flower head.

There were a few dragonflies as well. Nothing rare or even unexpected, but they gave a few photo ops such as this Widow Skimmer...

...this Black Saddlebags.....

....and this Common Whitetail.

This next wildflower is Climbing Prairie Rose. It is officially a Species At Risk, considered as Special Concern, in Ontario and Canada. It is most commonly found in parts of Essex County. Chatham-Kent has scattered populations, mostly in western C-K. There are a few populations in Lambton and Middlesex, but not much more than that. I had found this population during a butterfly count several years ago, and was glad to see that it is surviving, although a bit past its best on this day. Most flowers were wrinkled petals or none at all.

All in all it was probably a below average day for butterflies, at least for my area. The previous few weeks of heat and drought probably didn't help. I ended up with about 20 species overall, including the ones I saw in the shrubby/grassy field near Blenheim with the other three counters.

In case you didn't know, National Moth Week starts this weekend, and runs from July 18-26, so you can probably guess what I will be doing over these next few days! I'm already well behind in processing my moth photos from this season, but look forward to finding more new ones, and seeing some of the usual ones, so stay tuned!