The Washougal in July and the Hydaspe Frit

    It was the very middle of July.  The Pacific Northwest had just endured its first scorching of the year, temperatures in three digits for three consecutive days.  But now we were in a cooler patch, with this day's high expected in the low 80s.  The evidence of the heat was everywhere, with the roadside weeds a toasty brown, and but a few fresh blossoms surviving at the top of the foxglove, which predominates on the upper Washougal. 

Snowberry Checkerspot, Upper Washougal, July 2024

   The water in Timber Creek, where Sandra and I had stopped for our second look for butterflies, was now a memory.  There had been a trickle two weeks earlier.  Now the creek bed a was a lush green, but there wasn't even a hint of a surviving pool and no moist mud for a thirsty frit.  And fritillaries were the order of the day.

 

     Before heading out, I had emailed Caitlin LaBar, who indulges me way more than I deserve.  I asked our guru whether she thought Mount Hood or our local spot on the Washougal would be a better choice for butterflies on this day.  She replied that it was a little early for the mountain and that she had been to the tree farm the day before and seen checkerspots and Hydaspe Fritillary; we should see both near Dougan Falls.

Hydaspe Frit dorsal,  Upper Washougal, July 2024

   Hydaspe Frit had been a buggaboo for me.  I knew that Cait regarded it as the most common greater fritillary in our area, but I had never seen it here.  In fact, we claimed it on the basis of a difficult look last august on Mount Hood.  We really wanted this butterfly. 

    In the past, I had always thought summer began on the day school let out, sometime in the first week of June.  Of course, this is a bureaucratic decision, presumably based on the agricultural needs of the early  20th Century.  Over the past few years, I have been learning that the calendar employed by butterflies is substantially different than that used by the educators of SW Washington.  In this instance, we had yet to see Lorquin's Admiral or the Snowberry Checkerspot.  Both of these butterflies overwinter in the chrysalis and emerge when the time is right.  Can I call this the first day of summer?

    As we waited at Timber Creek, a bit before 11 AM,  more butterflies started to emerge.  The Clodius Parnassians,  a species that persists for well over three weeks, had been fluttering around since we arrived a bit after 10, but suddenly we wee seeing checkerspots.  Sandra netted one and I photographed a couple others.  

Hydaspe Frit ventral , Upper Washougal, July 2024

    We weren't seeing any other species and so we decided to drive further.  This involved driving up a steep three miles on the narrow gravel road.  We arrived at a three way intersection at about 2000 feet elevation.  

    You didn't need to be Margaret Mead to recognize that the natives use this wide spot in the Cascade foothillls for activities other than lepidoptery.   A large fire pit surrounded by crushed beer cans and spent shotgun shells was just off the center of this wide spot in the road.  

   But up here, a thousand feet higher than our go to spot at Timber Creek, the wildflowers were fresh and look!  There goes a larger orange butterfly!   Schmoopie and I were out in a trice, nets in hand.  Sandra had the first whack at a potential subject that settled in the road.  She missed, but shortly thereafter I netted one on the wing.  A quick look led us to believe that we had captured our first Hydaspe frit.  

The Washougal in July burbles below the weedy car park

    We did not get any pictures of this handsome butterfly in the field, but here are our pictures from the lab.  We have been seeing Western Meadow Fritillary for months, but this was our first experience with a Speyeria frit for this year.  We sent the pictures to Caitlin who confirmed our ID and sent along a 😊 to confirm her approval. 

    Before leaving this alpine paradise we walked around the perimeter and got a good look at the season's first Lorquin's Admiral.  Perhaps we should make the effort to climb up to this spot more often.

   With two subjects safely ensconced in the back seat we drove carefully down the hill and on to the weedy car park hard by the now diminished Washougal River.  At this unassuming but productive spot we encountered more checkerspots.  In addition, I spotted a few tiny orange butterflies.  These guys were smaller than blues...a truly tiny butterfly.   I caught one and coaxed Sandra from the car to put it into a bag.    Three was our limit and we headed home. 

 

Here is a video of these little butterflies in the car park.  They have been identified by our expert as Mylitta Crescents.   As you may recall, we saw this butterfly a couple months ago, so this represents a second cycle for this handsome, if excessively diminutive, species here in SW Washington.   And down below we have a nice still taken of a female from the same spot in the middle of May, exactly three months earlier.

A female Mylitta Crescent, May 16, 2024, Weedy Car park

  So how does a butterfly, snug in his chrysalis, know that it is time to emerge.  This is the species imperative:   For many species every individual must emerge simultaneously and get busy creating the next generation of butterflies.  Those adults are only going to live for three weeks, so it is critical that they all emerge at once.  Of course, this is not universally the case.  We should see Lorquin's Admiral virtually every time out until the middle of September.  But the checkerspot and many of the fritillaries are absolutely under this time constraint.  If a Snowberry Checkerspot breaks out of his chrysalis three weeks too late, he will have missed his chance.  Natural selection over millions of years has perfected this mechanism, whatever it may be.

     I reached out to Caitlin, who knows almost everything about butterflies and she stated confidently that it was a function of temperature and humidity.  These are parameters that I recorded in 1968 when I was working at a fire fighting station on the Columbia River.   Mostly this job involved creating fire breaks with a hoedag.  But to our modern mind, the simple physical elements of temperature and humidity seem a short step away from manual labor.  If a high schooler 50 years ago could understand it, there must be something wrong.  Furthermore, it doesn't explain how a first generation crescent emerges in chilly May and a second generation accomplishes the same miracle in July, when any sensible butterfly would be looking for an air conditioned movie theater.

     And so I sought a second opinion from Daniel Rubinoff;.  Perhaps a real professor of the butterfly and moth sciences could put a more scientific face on the problem. Something a man of the new millennium could get behind.  Unfortunately, Daniel has fled his ivory tower in Manoa to look for moths (which are really his passion) elsewhere.  His machine promises that he will get back to us in five days.

    In the meantime, I'm putting my money on a host plant releasing pheromones that summon the butterfly, his lepidopteran pollinator, from his cozy chrysalis.  

    Yeah!  Pheromones!  That's the ticket!

jeff