return to the rouge
July 5, 2009I missed the TEA’s annual July 1st Rouge Butterfly count. The previous night was our Billirads Tournemant finals. I hand’t anticipated making it to the finals. I certainly didn’t anticipate winning the finals. I also didn’t anticipate the celebratory shooters that followed. when I woke, some healthy hours into the following morning, I knew that standing around in a hot open field what not what the doctor ordered.
So this weekend, I decided to make my own field trip to the rouge. Armed with my new butterfly net, the audubon’s field guide, and my fledgling knowledge, I struck out.
I began in the same place, by the Pearse House, but I decided to skip the small first field that last year had yielded only skippers. Yes. I skipped the skippers. I find them tedious. My first non-skipper discovery was (I’m fairly certain) a Dark Wood Nymph. It only had eye spots on the top parts of its wings, and it really was beautifully, dusky dark.
I then followed the trail of a Tiger Swallowtail, all about the place, hoping it would lead me to some of its eggs or caterpillars, but I think I really need to learn my trees better before I have any hope there. Some kind of Fritillary or other began to tease me next. These things just don’t keep still even for a moment. Aptly named, I suppose. I’d wage I saw half a dozen Monarchs or so.
And then I caught this little thing that seemed like a cross between a skipper and a nymphy/satyr creature. I got out the book, while it patiently waited in the net, and I’ve decided it was a Prairie Ringlet.
The Frittilaries then lured me across another field, one of them pausing long enough for me to get within a hair’s breadth and be dazzled by the brightness of its orange.
I’m fairly certain that the rest of the nymphy/satyr things I found were Little Wood Nymphs- soft grey, with exactly four eye spots.
The Milkweed in one part of the field was covered in ladybug pupae, all hatching or about ready to hatch. I must have seen about 20 in these liminal states.
