Butterflies of MOW, Approximation 1

Last week I had the good fortune of being able to roam some highland fields. I spent most of my time in Mouth of Wilson, VA., a cultural and ecological crossroads. A variety of lifeways and pathways meet at this locality, steered by the geology and its mason, the New River. Along Wilson Creek just upstream from its mouth at the New River, summer wildflower meadows abound. This arterial waterway charts its coarse up and up, finding a multitude of spring heads upon Mount Rogers and lesser surrounding mountains and hills.

The following is a list of butterflies observed immediately along Wilson Creek in Mouth of Wilson from August 24-26, 2010. I still don't haven't ventured into the realm of skippers, so this list is far short of complete. One swampy area in particular was dancing with a variety skippers.

Eastern comma

Viceroy

Monarch

Black swallowtail

Eastern tiger swallowtail

Red spotted purple

Pipevine swallowtail

Cabbage white

Common buckeye

Silvery checkerspot

Pearl crescent

Great spangled fritillary

Meadow fritillary

Eastern tailed-blue

Wild indigo duskywing

Northern pearly eye

What b'fly is that?

The real secret to learning new species of animals and plants is study and repetition, but one thing that works especially well is to focus on the 10 commonest species within each group you are trying to learn. Another is to examine the species that closely resemble each other and figure out to tell them apart. The monarch-resembling group of butterflies can be difficult at first (monarch, queen. soldier, viceroy, gulf fritillary) but there are some clues that will help. For example look at the butterfly in the photo that I took recently at Myakka State Forest. It is reddish-orange with black veins, a little darker and smaller than a monarch; it flies more erratically and is often seen around wetlands with willows. Note especially the dark line that crosses the main veins in the hindwings- a unique and distinctive feature of the VICEROY butterfly, a Muellerian mimic that is also distasteful to birds due to its diet of willows, but less so than the monarch whose caterpillar feeds on milkweeds.

An even more difficult group of similarly appearing butterflies are swallowtails & others that are black, blue and yellow and mimic the toxic pipevine swallowtails. Isn't it amazing how these groups of mimics have evolved, and how hard they make it to learn to identify butterflies?

-Bill Dunson

Englewood, FL