On the trail of Sara's Orangetip

Son, You're on your own.

        A few days ago Sandra and I moved our flag from Casa Ono to the chilly PNW.  Hard by the bend in the Columbia River, we set about doing those domestic things one does when they move, in the process developing a deep seated animosity towards the bureaucratic BS associated with Verison internet.  I'm convinced it would be easier to buy a car than complete this internet transaction.

    Yesterday, we set all that aside and headed up to Dougan Falls for some butterfly watching.  There are a couple butterflies that actually prefer these early spring days. The one we want the most is Sara's Orangetip.  Last fall, we thought we had a date with Caitlin LaBar, to be guided to this spring beauty somewhere in the vicinity of Vancouver.  But life seems to have intervened with her, as well.  

Sara's Orangetip, courtesy Brian Pfeffer

     So just like Bart, as he assumed the duties of sheriff in and around the town of Rock Ridge, we were on our own.  

   I should point out that this medium sized white butterfly, with the orange sherbet wings, is routinely described, in the butterfly literature,  as charming. Sadly, Sara's Orangetip, which used to be fairly common, if you knew how to look for it, has become the poster child for habitat destruction.  Vacant land with native plans has given way to houses.

   In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes."

    It was a beautiful, crisp day on the upper Washougal with bright sun, blue sky and the temperature hovering at a dry 67 degrees.  The people around here call that a warm day.  The fact is, when you compensate for the lack of moisture in the air, it never gets this cold in Kona.  So, wearing our stocking caps and long johns, we made one stop after another looking for a white butterfly.  

  How do you capture an echo in a glass?

    At our furthest favorite spot we found a few Azure Echos, the tiny blue with which we have become so familiar.  I actually netted one and we proceeded to try to get a picture..  Sandra held the wine glass aloft while I attempted to get the camera to focus on the butterfly.  One of these pictures answers a question that must go back as far as Aeschylus...How to capture an echo in a glass.?

     By the way, the myth involving Echo goes like this.  Echo was a nymph, fancied by Zeus.  When the head god's wife, Hera, came looking for him, she was sidetracked by Echo, following Zeus's orders.  Once she caught on, Hera punished Echo with this curse: Echo could only speak those words last spoken to her.  Echo subsequently fell in love with narcissus, but as a consequence of the curse, she could only repeat his words of love and he fell in love with himself.

   One has to wonder at what point in his life Donald Trump encountered Echo?  And in the upcoming motion picture is Zeus's favorite nymph played by Stormy Daniels? 

Stormy looks on while Don admires his reflection, John Waterhouse

    But I digress.

   We swung around, back through the parking area at the falls, where we stopped for a walk.  Nothing was flying, not even a mouse.  Excuse me, a Mourning Cloak.   The Mourning cloak is the large handsome spring butterfly with the chocolate brown wings that solves the over wintering problem by famously crawling into a rotting stump, only to emerge when the temperature hits 67 degrees.  We had achieved all the correct parameters, and have seen a Mourning Cloak in this location in the past, but not on this day.  Que lastima.

The little blue butterfly and the Mother Ship

     And so we ended up at our most favorite spot, a mile or so up Dougan Creek.  By this time it was after noon, the sunlight was filtering through the alders, dappling the rocks and the cascading water.  It was idyllic.  But for a while, not much was happening up on the road.  

    After perhaps ten minutes, a few echo azures appeared.  We watched them for a bit and then one cooperatively landed on Sandra's blue Skecher.   So cooperative was he that I was able to take picture.  We laughed about this.  Was the tiny blue butterfly returning to the blue Mother Ship?  Was he attempting to mate with the biggest, bluest thing he could find?   We'll never know.

    We waited a bit longer, and a larger white butterfly flew up the road.  And then another flew past us. We saw no color on the wings, especially orange, but it was pretty enticing. 

    At this point Sandra began wondering why we didn't have two nets (having left one of the nets back in the Sandwich Islands).  And then she demanded a turn with the net.  In some ways she is a lot like Hera, so one messes with her at their peril.  Suffice it to say , she got the net.  

Echo Azure on Sandra's shoe, Enlarged

   And in less time than it takes to say "Donald Trump is a narcissist" she had netted a plump white butterfly.  It took only a trice for me to identify it as a Margined White. This is a butterfly that occurs in the spring and continues to appear throughout the summer, which might make you think that it ought to be fairly common.  On the contrary, this was only the second one that we had seen.  

    Curiously, our first was netted in the Yacolt Burn two years ago, and might have been the very first butterfly that we had so captured.  As such, we didn't have much of a plan about what to do next.  As it turned out, we took its picture through the net.  While it created a picture that helped identify the bug, it was, in general, less than satisfactory.  It was this experience that led us, through trial and error, to the plastic vegetable bags and the wine glass, the better to catch the Echo.  

     You see?  It all comes together.

    This time, knowing that we did not have an adequate picture of this species, we took the butterfly back to the ranch and placed it in the cooler.  After a nap, I went out and harvested a sprig of maple leaves and some tree debris.  We arranged these on a plastic cutting board, and then Sandra positioned the butterfly and I slapped a refrigerated wine glass over the little dear.  The ensemble was moved to our mantelpiece with a green folder from Fisher Investments (who kindly employ my son gainfully) as a backdrop.

margined white, P. marginalis, Dougan Creek, april 2024 Photo SKG

   Sandra, who is a very good macro photographer when motivated, delivered the coup de grace with her Samsung phone.  Et voila!

   Do we have our shit together or what?

    I don't know what you think, but I just created one of these margined Whites for the upcoming paper mache butterfly extavaganza, opening May 28th at the Cascade Park Library.  As such, I'm very familiar with what's on the internet and this, my friends, is da bomb.

   Its springtime already, so get out there and find yourself a butterfly!

jeff

Our guru, Caitlin LaBar, tells us that p. marginalis has more pronounced vein markings in the spring and fall and are nearly immaculate in mid summer.  this apparently is related to day length.    j