The Butterflies of Fall...including a trip to Mount St. Helens

Arizona Sister near St. George Utah.  Photo Bob Hillis

      As we head into September, we notice the shadows lengthening and the days getting shorter.  Along
with this we see fewer wild flowers and butterflies.  However, if you look at the description of many of our western butterflies you notice that they continue to fly into the fall.

      I was recently provided with an excellent example of later butterfly sightings.  Our good friend Bob Hillis, an astute observer of nature it there ever was one, has relocated to southern Utah.  Last week Bob sent along pictures of an Arizona Sister and a  Wood Nymph, both recently photographed.  The Arizona sister was definitely in range, near St. George, Utah.  Here you see Bob's wonderful picture.  This butterfly varies slightly from the California Sister which should be found in the oak forests of Oregon.  I have yet to see it.  

    Bob's identification was confirmed by the piece in Field Guide to Butterflies of North America by Kaufman.   This handy book  presents every butterfly found in the United States and Mexico. That's a lot of butterflies!  In addition to Bob's photo, I'm including the piece on Sisters butterflies from Kaufman.  Suffice it to say, the differences are subtle but the two are widely separated geographically.  By the way,  if you are reading this and you know where Sandra and I can see a California Sister, please drop us a note. 

Plate and description of Sisters from Kaufman

    We will address Bob's Wood Nymph observation later in the blog.

    Sandra and I took a recent trip to the northern Oregon coast.  While this may not be the best place to look for butterflies, distribution maps and descriptions suggest that there should be some species there that we have yet to add to our list.  We stayed in Seaside, where the community was preparing for the Hood to Coast, a relay race that now attracts international attention and culminates with a huge party on the beach.

  After watching the roustabouts erecting pavilions on the sand, we headed south to the Circle Creek Conservation Area, which is best known for a herd of elk..  My hope was to find natural plants and weather warm enough to get the butterflies aloft.  Summer weather on the coast is strange and for the two days we were there, the temperature never got above 70. (We think 74 degrees might be a magic number. for most Northwest butterflies.)  Although the conservation area turned out to be largely a deserted Christmas tree farm, there were trails leading into the native forest.  I saw a few birds, including a Western Wood Pewee that had an insect in its bill, but no butterflies..
 

On the conservation trail south of Seaside, Or.

    Our other interest in the area focused on the art galleries in Cannon Beach.  There we happened on a gallery, Images of the West, featuring the photographic art of Randall Hodges.  He had a monster print on aluminum of Mt St. Helens.  We were planning a trip to St, Helens and this magnificent piece of art whetted our appetite.

    A few days ago, we left the house around 7:30 and headed north.  We exited I - 5 at Castle Rock and headed east on Wa 504 to Mt. St. Helens.  It is about another hour of driving from the freeway to the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Johnston Ridge Observatory is the spot one goes if he wants to see the vista captured by Mr. Hodges.  

    We began our visit with a debriefing by the national park ranger staff, ensconced comfortably in their modern, air conditioned visitor center.  Here are the high points.  Wildflowers, as seen in Mr. Hodges photo, are present for only two or three weeks, from late July to early August, depending on the year.  To get to the spot where Hodges took his picture one needs to walk a little less than a mile downhill into the valley between the ridge and the mountain.  Suffice it to say, the visitor is then obligated to hike back up, what I guess to be a 700 foot elevation gain. There are no butterflies At Johnston Ridge in late August, but they were present a few weeks earlier during the ever so brief wildflower season.   To see late summer butterflies, one has to descend to the riparian forest around Coldwater Lake.

Randall Hodges Mt. St Helens

   It had been a foggy morning and a bit after 10 AM the mist was still burning off.  Like Vesuvius and Aetna, the volcano is still smoking ever so gently, suggesting that another eruption may come at any moment.  Outside the air conditioned visitor center, there is a remarkable belvedere from which one looks a few miles across a valley to the volcano.  As a child growing up in Vancouver, Mt. St. Helens was a fixture of my life, rising like Mt Fuji outside Tokyo, a perfect white cone.  I'm amazed that it took 40 years for me to return to the mountain and get a close look at the dramatic change.  This really is something to see, all the more so if you have memories of the peaceful snow-capped mountain.

Mt. St. Helens, August 29, 2022.  photo SKG

    We took our pictures, and not desiring a hot, arduous hike, re-boarded the BOT-mobile and headed back down to Coldwater Lake.   There we found an asphalt trail culminating with a boardwalk into the marsh.  On a willow near the end of the walk, I spotted a Lorquin's Admiral, who had given away his location by a short, fluttery flight.  He was about fifteen feet away, too far for our camera to get a good shot, but well within binocular range.  We enjoyed our look at this handsome butterfly.  

   Eighteen months ago I would have been elated.  As it turns out, this butterfly is the most common big, beautiful butterfly of the riparian habitat in Oregon and Southern Washington.  Even my daughter in law, a hunter and a hiker who, were it not for me, would not give a fig for butterflies, is aware of Lorquin's Admiral.

 

My stock photo of Lorquin's Admiral

    We crossed the road and took the Hummock Trail, also recommended by the ranger.  On the trail we saw some miserable little brown skippers that defy identification.  And I was able to call in a family of Black Capped Chickadees.  This is as close as one can come to getting skunked.

    Having exhausted the National Volcanic Monument, we headed back to the Mt St Helens Forestry Center.  The Forestry Center is a handsome building run by Weyerhauser, the preeminent forestry company in this neck of the woods.  It is staffed by Weyerhauser employees, past and present, and a nice lady named Julie who runs the gift shop.  Here you can learn much more than you wanted to know about the devastation following the 1981 eruption and the subsequent recovery of dead trees.  There is a room with some exhibits of wildlife that live in the Douglas fir forest.  Some of these exhibits are quite amateurish, and I had hopes that a few of my butterflies might find a permanent home here.  Curiously, there didn't seem to be anyone that might make a curatorial decision, so this project is temporarily on hold.  They did have a couple alder stumps just itching for a paper mache butterfly, so this battle isn't over.  

   The previously mentioned Julie was happy to look at the butterflies, when she wasn't distracted by the need to sell postcards and the like.  Sandra did what she could to add to the confusion by purchasing postcards.  Julie lives in Troutlake, a small community back down the 504 and across the street from the eponymous body of water.  She was the only one there who might have local knowledge and she did not know of a way to get down to running water.that might support lepidoptera.

The Common Wood Nymph sur la table.

   Happily, about 10 miles down the road we spied the Toutle River and shortly there after a gravel road leading to a car park near the stream.  We disembarked and took a short walk by the burbling stream which was lined by alders.  It was a glorious summer afternoon.  We met a fisherman on his way home and passed a patch of flattened grass where one presumes a family of deer bed down for the night.  As we returned from our stroll, just before entering the car park, two dark butterflies fluttered across the path.  Swoosh!  I netted one.  We could see that this was a wood nymph, but we bagged him for further examination. 

    If you wish to find this charming spot on the Toutle, it is two miles upstream from Kid Valley.  As we drove on, I wondered if the village was named for a juvenile goat, the local raggazzi or the famous captain, who, although ending his life on the gallows in London, is usually awarded a second D for being such a good pirate. 

Maybe a Great Basin Wood Nymph, Bob Hillis

    Back at the ranch, the butterfly was refrigerated and, after the participants awoke from their nap, moved to the dining table for photography.  You see, we have learned our lesson.  The last wood nymph we captured aroused too quickly and ascended into the trees before he could be captured on film. One suspects that some species of butterflies are less prone to cooperative stupor when refrigerated. 

  We placed him on a leaf and before a suitable picture was obtained, he flopped onto the floor.  Sandra replaced him and eventually we got the photo you see here.  This is a Common Wood Nymph.  Look at the ventral forewing and note that the upper spot is smaller than the lower spot.

    Below you  see Bob's wood nymph. At first I thought he had a Great Basin wood Nymph, with a large spot over a smaller spot, but on careful examination I realized that he had captured only a portion of the forewing... that second spot is on the hind wing.  Although we may suspect this is a Great Basin Wood Nymph based on location and habitat, the two overlap in Utah and I can't say for sure.  I checked with an expert ( Jeff Pippen) and he agrees; without the second spot you just can't say.  So I guess Bob has to go out in the forest and find another butterfly.  Life could be worse!

 jeff