Tagged monarch - photo by Jim Mason
------------ NOVEMBER, 2001-------------
HARVEY COUNTY BUTTERFLY COUNT
(Dwight Platt sent us the results of their local count in the Newton area on July 14, 2001. With more observers - 14, more time spent in the field – 8 hours, and a good diversity of habitats checked, they totally blew our count out of the water in terms of total species - 51 and total individuals – 631. Great work, guys! The count summary and a brief history of their group follows.)
HISTORY OF THE COUNT - By Dwight Platt
In Harvey County we have a long tradition of Christmas Bird Counts, beginning in 1949 with the present continuous series. In most of the more than 50 counts, we have used a count circle that extends from western Harvey County to the eastern edge of Newton, including sandhills habitat, the Little Arkansas River and its tributaries, Emma, Black Kettle and Sand creeks, and the towns of Newton, Halstead and Hesston, as well as agricultural habitats. In the last years the count has been sponsored by Kauffman Museum in North Newton.
For a number of years we have talked at Kauffman Museum about sponsoring a July Butterfly Count. Finally in 2000, we initiated our first count. We decided to use the same count circle that we use for the Christmas Bird Counts. We had a program on butterflies the Sunday afternoon before the Saturday count.
We only had four counters in one group that first year and were able to count at two sites in the sandhills, at the prairie reconstruction at Kauffman Museum, on the Sand Creek Trail in North Newton, and at the Dyck Arboretum in Hesston. We saw 179 butterflies of 26 species, which we thought was okay for our first attempt.
In 2001, we had better announcements in the newspapers, sent out announcements and invitations to some of our local naturalists and also had a Sunday afternoon program preceding the count. We had 14 counters and divided into two groups. Therefore we were able to cover some new sites in addition to the areas covered the previous year: Dr Robert Simmons' rural property with prairie and riparian habitat as well as many butterfly plantings and new park and residential sites. We saw 3 1/2 times as many butterflies and almost twice as many species as on the first count. Much of this increase was due to the increased number of counters and new productive sites for counting. However there also appeared to be more butterflies this year as each of the two groups saw more butterflies and more species than the group did last year. We hope we can build on this in coming years and cover more habitats within our circle.
COUNT SUMMARY - July 14, 2001
15 - Black Swallowtail
44 - Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
1 - Spicebush Swallowtail
10 - Checkered White
14 - Cabbage White
3 - Clouded Sulphur
29 - Orange Sulphur
3 - Cloudless Sulphur
13 - Little Yellow
1 - Sleepy Orange
35 - Dainty Sulphur
5 - "Olive" Juniper Hairstreak
6 - Gray Hairstreak
5 - Marine Blue
6 - Reakirt’s Blue
25 - Eastern Tailed-Blue
7 - Spring Azure
6 - American Snout
3 - Variegated Fritillary
1 - Great Spangled Fritillary
43 - Gorgone Checkerspot
1 - Silvery Checkerspot
61 - Pearl Crescent
1 - Phaon Crescent
30 - Question Mark
10 - American Lady
24 - Painted Lady
10 - Red Admiral
5 - Common Buckeye
16 - Viceroy
1 - Goatweed Leafwing
35 - Hackberry Emperor
1 - Tawny Emperor
1 - Little Wood-Satyr
53 - Common Wood Nymph
8 - Monarch
25 - Silver-spotted Skipper
1 - Southern Cloudywing
7 - Hayhurst’s Scallopwing
1 - Funereal Duskywing
5 - Wild Indigo Duskywing
41 - Common Checkered Skipper
2 - Common Sootywing
5 - Least Skipper
3 - Fiery Skipper
2 - Tawny-edged Skipper
1 - Sachem
1 - Delaware Skipper
1 - Dun Skipper
2 - Nysa Roadside-Skipper
2 - Common Roadside-Skipper
BUTTERFLIES OF PERU
Roy presented a splendid multimedia show on his recent travels to South America at our fall meeting on September 10. He used both slides and digital media to illustrate the trip to Peru he and Pat took last year. From Macchu Pichu to Andean cloud forests to the upper Amazon basin, it looked like the trip of a lifetime!
MONARCH NEWS
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Our two tagging dates had very different results. Only three Monarchs were seen on September 15 and they weren’t stopping to nectar. It took a sprint through the sunflowers to even catch one for a tagging demonstration! A week later on the 22nd, three people could not catch them fast enough! The field north of the nature center parking lot was covered with blooming goldenrod and hungry Monarchs. We tagged 139 in two hours. |
Oddly, reports from Botanica indicate they never saw this wave of travelers. And indeed, all across south central Kansas, there never was a noticeable migratory "front" that came through as we have seen in past years.
Plans are afoot for a trip to the Monarch wintering grounds in Mexico in late February / early March 2003. Contact Roy or the editor if you are interested in going. Or visit the following web page to see the trip description.
http://www.esb.utexas.edu/jcabbott/travel/Mexico/Feb2002/monarch.htm