Durham Butterfly Count

Folks,

Last Sunday Meg and I helped with the 11th annual Durham Butterfly Count. I have helped on this count 9 out of the past 11 years if I recall correctly. We covered the Little River Impoundment, Penny's Bend Nature Preserve, High Field and our gardens. Not many of the group leaders visited gardens as normally the best place to find butterflies is in wild places with native flowers in bloom. Sara P Duke Gardens was covered due to the large masses of butterfly friendly flowers there.

Meg and I ended up finding 45 species of butterflies which is pretty good. The entire collective effort of the butterfly count tallied 58 species. Each group usually finds something the others don't find, ours was a fresh Painted Lady.

I talked the Will in the morning and his group had already found a Mourning Cloak, Nymphalis antiopa which is never found in our area in July or August as they are aestivating until it gets cooler. Anyway an hour later Meg found the above Mourning Cloak along the edge of the woods and it posed for several photos. So Mourning Cloak is now added to the count list.


This small frog gave me a small fit as its markings didn't match anything I have seen in the area. Experts tell me it is an immature Southern Leopard Frog. Usaully they are green with lots of spots.

Meg found this little red dragonfly in the shady woods. This is a Blue-faced Meadowhawk, Sympetrum ambiguum. These are a fall season dragonfly and it was several weeks early if you ask me.

This Mocha Emerald, Somatochlora linearis was found cruising a forested trail, and landed especially for me to take photos. These tend to fly with out landing so getting a photo is fairly good.

Halloween Pennant, Celithemis eponina we saw lots of these in one meadow we walked in.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail from our garden, not very many of these were found this year. The only butterfly we found only in our garden during the count was Hoary Edge and we found three of them.

Monarch, Danaus plexippus nectaring on Butterflyweed. meg found this one as I'm colored blind and missed seeing the ornage flowers. I would have seen the movement.

This female Monarch is laying eggs on Common Milkweed that had been mowed down and was growing back, good for her!
Some day I'll post some photos I took in 2004 during the 3 months I observed them on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Oh WOW!

Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae These butterflies can be seen moving northward in large numbers on the eastern coast in a few weeks. This one was just resting. I've always believed that the Cloudless Sulphur was the butterfly where the name "butter" fly came from, it looks just like a pat of butter in flight.