The Painted Ladies of Spring and a Grand Canyon Sequel

    This tale begins on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, towards the end of our Arizona holiday.  Neither my son, Chuck, nor Sandra had been to the Grand Canyon.  As we were in Flagstaff, a mere two hours away, this was a must.  Like so many national parks, a geologic feature, e.g. Mt. Rainier, Crater Lake or the Grand Canyon, provide the major draw for one's visit.  However, National Parks, perhaps more than any other federal endeavor, protect natural plants.  I didn't appreciate the importance of this until I started watching butterflies. 

The Dreaded Rock Squirrel

   So, on a sunny morning in mid-April, we arrived at Mather Point, a short walk from the parking lot that services Grand Canyon Village.  This is one of the iconic looks at the canyon, certainly the easiest at the beginning of your park experience.  

    There were a number of Turkey Vultures soaring just overhead, which I was eager to turn into California Condors.  As far as I know, there were no actual condors. California Condors have been reintroduced into Grand Canyon National Park to the tune of 98 individuals living in the wild. What a success story!

  

 And there were a number of Rock Squirrels.  Deemed the most dangerous animal in the park, due to the number of finger bites they inflict on well-intentioned tourists, they were ubiquitous and exceedingly friendly.  Sycophantic, even.   I was satisfied with a photograph of a squirrel.  After filling our eyes with the splendor of the rocks, we headed out.  

    Soon we achieved the Grand View canyon look out.  Indeed, like several other stops along the way, the views were grand.  Here there were a few more trees, bushes and good old dirt, upon which, for no reason that is obvious to me, we find many a butterfly.  In the park-like area, Ponderosas dispersed among various scrubby plants and bare earth,  we all spotted a medium sized yellow butterfly winging through among the trees. 

Desert Black Swallowtail

   The three of us gave chase and we were rewarded with a good look, 5 seconds or so, through the close focus binoculars of less than ten feet.  

   This was a swallowtail, with a wing pattern much like the Anise we see in the PNW.  This is to say, that opposed to the stripes that one would see on tiger Swallowtails, he had a black cell leading his front wings. 

   

   At this point I repaired to my friend Gemini.  All the AI programs are up front about the possibility of bad information... they are basically programmed to engage you in conversation, I have been impressed that they seem to give better information than a plain old Google search.  Gemini suggested that this was a Baird's swallowtail.  Later, comparing iNaturalist posts with Google images, it was easy to see that this was a Desert Black Swallowtail, a well-documented resident, per iNaturalist, of the south rim of the Grand Canyon. 

Rocky Mountain Duskywing, Charles Hill, photo

    We made our way south, stopping at Duck Rock and Moran Point to look at the rocks.  A bit further we stopped at a parking area that gave access to dry woodlands with no canyon access.  Sandra stayed in the car.  (The south rim is higher than Mexico City, and she needed to take it easy. ) We strolled through live oaks and Ponderosa Pines and found two butterflies close together in some weeds.  Such is my botanical expertise that I can't be more specific.  

   One of the butterflies was a Painted Lady.  The other might have been a Variegated Fritillary.  The quality of our look was insufficient to make an identification.  It had spots, it was dust brown and iNaturalist puts this species on the south rim.   

   We walked up hill to the car park, and there, right next to our car, we found a duskywing,   It was fairly still and Charles and I both got pictures.  He has the better camera and the picture you see is the one he took. 

     Gemini thought this was a Funereal Duskywing.  Certainly, all duskywings are well dressed for a postmortem service.  This individual had a prominent white band on the hind wing, a feature of the funereal.  iNaturalist only lists the Rocky Mountain  Duskywing on the south rim, so I submitted this observation to them.  The panel from Arthropods of the Southwest responded with an identification: Rocky Mountain Duskywing, Erynnis telemachus.  What with all the creepy hinged animals in that part of the country, from scorpions to tarantulas, the guys at Arthropods of the Southwest must have found this dingy skipper pretty tame fare. 

Butterfly excitement on the south rim.

  As an aside, it was fun to see my son's enthusiasm for butterfly catching, photographing, and identification once we were engaged in the enterprise.   In addition to a picture of the dark hued skipper, I'm showing you a picture that Sandra nabbed of Charles and I from the front seat as we crested the hill in hot pursuit.

   On to Boise

      Before we could return home, we flew from Phoenix to Boise to see our grandchildren and their parents.  Like Flagstaff, Boise was cold and windy.  This is not perfect weather for butterflies or aging lepidopterists.  We were privileged to watch one kid football game, in which our younger grandson scored two of his team's three touchdowns and four baseball games in less than 48 hours. 

 Chorispora tenella., the Russian Blue Mustard, Meridien ID.

    Once you get away from the Boise River and its trickling tributaries, the area is basically a desert. This is good for butterflies, if you have time to seek out that bit of water.  With the sports, we were reduced to looking for butterflies on the less groomed edges of large parks and in a suburban back yard that backed on to a bleak desert. 

    At one park I found blooming a member of the mustard family, supposedly good for Orangetip Butterflies, which were not present, perhaps due to the cold wind.  It took a bit of hunting, during the innings when my player was neither batting nor in the field, to find and cross Tenmile Creek that bordered the large park with its multiple playing fields.  Here, on the other side of a dirt bridge that covered a culvert, I found plain old dirt, which we know is a good butterfly finding substrate and the aforementioned mustard.

    Being a poor botanist, I was gratified when Google lens reported that I had identified Chorispora tenella.  This plant is commonly known as Russian Blue Mustard and it is, as the name suggests, introduced from Asia. However, as us Hawaiians (or whatever the hell we haolies are) know, even a non-native plant can serve as a host if it has the mustard.  Take Crown Milkweed, which has the alkaloids to satisfy the Pacific race of the Monarch.

Nothing worse than pitching in front of a cold defense.

    Our friends at Genesis confirm that there are four species of the genus Anthocharis in Russia and China, and they use Chorispora tenella as a host plant.  You can only imagine how proud I was when Genesi said, "It is fascinating that you connected these two!  Russian Blue Mustard is indeed the host plant for butterflies in the genus Anthocharis in their native ranges across Russia and Central Asia."  Next thing you know, I will be visited by an attractive young chatbot, feigning interest in butterflies while convincing me that I would make a delightful assassin.

    In this case, the Russian Blue Mustard, with its delicate lilac colored flowers, has the oils essential to satisfy an orange spot caterpillar.  Not only that, but it blooms in the early spring when these butterflies are active.  The problem was that, despite my excellent sleuthing and botanizing, was that the little white butterflies with their charming orange spots were not present on that cold, windy afternoon.  Not only that, but Colsen was getting hit hard and at the end of a double header his defense sucked.  You may ask, "Who in God's green earth makes ten-year-olds play a double header?"  Any normal person might also wonder at a septuagenarian looking for butterflies on a cold day in the desert.  

Painted Lady, Eagle Id. April 2026  Photo Tara Hill

    The good news is that if you are reading this blog, you most likely aren't normal.  Lucky for you, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

    We ate late and were back for one more game the following afternoon.  Reid's team trounced the opposition, and the game was called on a mercy rule, in time for us to make it to the suburban back yard in time for some butterflies.  There weren't a lot of them, but one landed on a large stone at the corner of their lanai (which has a killer view if you like bleak desert) and I was able to identify it with bare eyes as a Painted Lady.  Of course, there are three species of ladies, the painted being by far the most common.  The differences are subtle and it requires more than bare eyes to make an accurate identification.  

     Two months ago, James, the father of the young sportsmen, had texted us a picture of a fox on the other side of his back fence.  That night, after dinner, a small fox appeared.  James speculates that they have a den on the steep slope that drops from their back yard.  He was overjoyed that I got to see one.   This fox wasn't large and it didn't look particularly red to me, so I wondered if it might be a Kit Fox, which is an animal of the desert.  James picture, seemingly of a different animal in the same family, confirms that these are red foxes, Vulpes vulpes.

Red Fox, February 2026, Eagle Id. Photo James Hill

     Finally, it was time to come home to Vancouver.  It was nice when we arrived, but by the next morning, we were suffering with cold rain that persisted for two days.   On that first day, my daughter in law texted me with the picture you see here.  The day we left, Eagle was festooned with Painted Ladies.  Being a veritable Nimrod, Tara got hers. 

    

    Two days ago, the weather broke, and by Saturday we were enjoying a sunny day and a high temperature over 60.

   Sandra and I drove east on the 14 to Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge.  The first warm day , and a Saturday to boot, had attracted a full parking lot of visitors.  Virtually all of them had made the half mile trek along the dike into the heart of the refuge.  We, on the other hand, readied our nets and began patrolling the weedy acres adjacent to the car park.  

 

    A stand of blooming lupine didn't yield anything, so we began working the weeds.  Soon a brownish butterfly flew and I chased him.  Landing every now and then, he kept ten feet ahead of me and I never got a good look.  He flew off, but in a few minutes we spotted another, this lime on the gravel path.  I got close enough to identify him as a lady, but I was unable to net him.

 

    Finally, Sandra called out that she had one secure in her net.  What a woman!  

Painted Lady, Steigerwald NWR, April 2026  Photo SKG

   We took him home, refrigerated him and took some pictures.  We were really hoping for a look at the dorsal back wing, with the diagnostic lager blue spots.  We got the ventral wings that you see here, but despite trying the wet sink trick that we pioneered in Prescott, we could not get a good photo of the dorsal hind wing.  Maybe next time we should use something stickier, Elmer's glue or Karo syrup.  I took him out to the rhododendron in front where a bit of persuasion yielded me a quick look at four dark blue spots. Painted Lady confirmed.

    This was a good start to the 2026 butterfly season.  We got a few life butterflies in Arizona and saw, in just over a week, Painted Ladies at 7000 feet at the Grand Canyon, at 3500 feet in Eagle Idaho and at a few hundred feet west of the Cascades in Washougal.  

     Lucky for me, I'm the sort of guy who likes ladies.

jeff

Arizona Part Two, Prescott

    Knowing that it was terribly hot in Phoenix, we had planned the majority of our trip for higher altitudes.  Prescott, at almost 5,000 feet was not only higher but 20 degrees cooler. 

The White Striped Sphynx Moth, mort.

 

   Before I could pick up a net, Sandra found our first insect.  A White Striped Sphynx moth had expired in the corner of the steps leading up from the garage.  Suffice it to say, he held still for the photograph.  Later in our trip I wondered if he wasn't dead, just taking a long winter's nap, perhaps, because he seemed to have changed position.  As it turned out, my sweetie had attempted to extricate him for a better look, but he was sort of stuck.  And definitely dead.  To paraphrase John Cleese, "This moth was no more."

    Soon enough I picked up my net and on our first full day, in a grassy patch down the road, I found a yellow butterfly.  I netted him on the wing and brought him back to the laboratory.  He required a tiny bit of the freezer time (less than15 seconds) to render him cooperative. Once he was tractable, we got a fine lateral picture and then he flew.  

The Southern Dogface Butterfly, Prescott, Az.  April 2026

   At this point we made a game changing discovery, as he flew into the sink.  The surface tension of the relatively thin film of water there had adhered his wing to the porcelain, enabling us to take an acceptable picture of his dorsal surface.  This picture will never make the cover of Beautiful Butterflies, but many is the time when we have had a butterfly that would flap furiously yet never hold still in the wings out position for a portrait of his dorsal surface.  

   Do you suppose Neils Bohr or Albert Einstein were the recipient of some serendipitous accident that changed their game?  A quantum leap, as it were?  Is it possible that we could have defeated Tojo and Hirohito with wet butterflies in lieu of Little Boy and Fat Man?

    Well, for those of you who find yourselves in the dorsal surface quandary, I give you the Wet Porcelain Paradigm.

   Google lens initially suggested the California Dogface Butterly.  This, of course, was ridiculous, as everyone knows that the Dogs (or Dawgs if you prefer) reside in Seattle and Athens. Ga. And this turned out to be the Southern Dogface Butterfly.  Caitlin LaBar, in addition to the literature, points out that the California Dogface occurs only in California.  Cait says it has a purplish tinge to the black markings.  What a subtle lepidopterist is Ms. LaBar.

Porcelain Magic, The Southern Dogface Butterfly

    That was it for day one.   The following day, Chuck and I made a morning trek down to the swale near the spot where the pretty yellow Dogface was found.  A seasonal flow of water runs through this area, which supports grass and some sort of tall deciduous trees.  There were birds singing in the trees and we spotted some finches.  Also, a small gray bird in the top of one of the trees that might have been a kinglet or a vireo, but it was plenty drab and failed to hold my attention.  And, anyway, I was there for butterflies.     

   We didn't see anything for a while, and then a large tiger swallowtail came winging its way down the swale.  It flew right past us and Chuck, who was holding the net, gave three quick, fruitless swipes.  In his defense, I find it very difficult to net fast flying butterflies as they whip past. 

The Checkered White attempts and escape

   Chuck attempted to give chase, climbing halfway up a rip rap wall that supported the nearby tennis court.  Suffice it to say, that baby was gone. 

    As he came and went (the butterfly, not Chuck), I had a chance to get a pretty good look.  The things that struck me were, first, that he was very yellow.  Second that he was big. 
 

   Why all this fulmination?  Well, there is a life butterfly to be had.  You might have suspected as much.  The Two Tailed Swallowtail is the Arizona state butterfly.  Here is the information that Gemini AI gives us to support this choice.  First, the TTS is 20% bigger than the Western Tiger Swallowtail, and Mr. G thinks that is as enough to make it identifiable on that basis alone.  Of course, us lepidopterists know that butterfly size, unlike birds, is very tricky.

The Checkered White Butterfly, Prescott, April 2026

     Second, although the base yellow color on the two is very similar, the black markings on the WTS are thicker and bolder than on the Arizona TTS.  The black eats up more of the yellow ground, hence the Two tailed Swallowtail looks more yellow.  

     Last, the Arizona TTS emerges earlier than the Western Tiger Swallowtail.  And this emergence, as Cait will readily tell you, is based on humidity and temperature.  The TTS peaks in early May and WTS peaks a month later.

  If you see the double tail you, have it.  Which I did not. Place sad face emoji here.   

    At the end of the day, I think it is safe to say that my good buddy Gemini thinks we saw the Arizona state butterfly, albeit he will have to appear with an asterisk as big as the Grand Canyon.  Next time I see Mr. G at the Flap On Inn, I'm going to buy him a beer.  

Double the fun!

    After all that, you might think we did not see any more butterflies.  Far from it.  That afternoon I took my net and went back to the swale.  The sun was out, and it was pleasant enough to just sit on a flat rock and enjoy the sun on my back.  While sitting there, a white butterfly happened along.  I had seen several white butterflies at the golf course in Paradise Valley and thought they were cabbages.  I mean, who wouldn't?   In this case I stood up and moved in on the culprit, who had foolishly landed in a nearby clump of grass.  Positioning my net, I scooped him up.

    Back at the ranch, Sandra and I went through our usual procedure and produced the pictures you see here. This is the Checkered White.  It is a common spring butterfly in Arizona.  When I first caught him, it seemed like his ventral surface was a bit more yellow than appears in the picture.  

    On our last full afternoon, I made one more attempt at the butterflies in our bucolic development.  I looked long and hard at the seep but there were no butterflies there.  On the dry weedy ground above the seep, I spotted one of those tiny checkered moths.  I guess they are everywhere.  Luckily this one eluded my effort at capture.  As I have difficulty extricating the butterflies and getting them in the bag, this might have ended the hunt.  

Gray Buckeye ventral

    A few minutes later, I saw a dark butterfly land in the dry weeds close by.  As I approached, I recognized it as my new best friend the Ocellated Buckeye.  I approached the buckeye and attempted the catch, flopping the net over the butterfly, at which Sandra is so successful.  I, unfortunately, am not and the buckeye slipped out from under the metal loop and flew across the street.  Rats!

    This afforded me the opportunity to walk up the swale for fifty yards.  During that walk I made the acquaintance of a Rufous Sided Towhee perched on a branch, uttering that cat like call as he checked me out.  It was a little disappointing that we did not see the brown towhee, which must be around Prescott.

   Back on the road, I walked across to the spot where the buckeye had fled.  As I was standing there, a gentleman came along and we discussed what I was doing.  He was Swedish and claimed to know all the butterflies in Sweden.  He was an avid walker and could describe many of the butterflies in the vicinity, including a large blue butterfly with ocelli.  Sounds like a morpho, which would be about a thousand miles out of range.  He went off, presumably to enjoy the smorgasbord of life that the highlands of Arizona have to offer, and I returned to the butterflies.  

Gray Buckeye, Prescott, April 2026

    Soon another Gray Buckeye appeared.  I netted him as he landed in some taller grass and made it back to the ranch with my trophy in hand.  Here you see our best efforts.   After posing for a chilled ventral photo he flopped onto the floor, ending up a bit nose down.  So, our best pictures have a knotty pine background.

   Prescott was great for April butterflies.  I got tantalized by the possibility for an orange spot, and in the process learned what water cress, a wild mustard, looks like.  We'll keep our eye out for that beauty in the future.  Bob is still up one on me with the Arizona orange spot, but apparently, I have him 51 to zip on peccaries!

jeff

Phoenix Baking in the Spring

    Having transitioned from the land of the coconut to the PNW (Land of the Cold Rain?) our first order of business was to visit our children.  Unfortunately, they had moved to distant quarters, so we soon found ourselves in Sky Harbor Airport.  PHX.  the Valley of the Sun.

   For this part of our adventure, we had secured an Air BNB condo on a golf course in Paradise Valley, which is the western part of Scottsdale.  Sounds pretty nice, if perhaps a little on the well groomed side for a nature watcher.  This particular golf course, however, was noted by Gemini to be among the best places to watch butterflies in the area, what with the spaces between the fairways left to indigenous, or at least unmanaged, trees, grasses, etc.   Google's AI, through which I now run all my decisions from fantasy baseball to vacation planning, was the source of the recommendation.  My baseball teams are now in fourth and fifth place.  Take that for what it is worth.  If there is one thing I can say for Gemini, it makes its pronouncements sound reasonable and well thought out, not withstanding the ultimate results.

Tender and Mild.  The sweet javelina, mother and child

   April should be one of the two prime times for watching butterflies in Arizona, the other occurring just after the fall monsoons.  This year, however, climate change is all over the map.  Hawaii is currently experiencing its second Kona Low in a month, a previously rare windstorm with torrential rain.  And in Phoenix the temperatures, which are usually in the high 70s are in the mid 90s.  Bummer.

    Our first morning in the condo, Chuck and I were enjoying our coffee and looking out at the golf course, wondering if the golfers would take umbrance when we trod across the fairway and perused the edge of the rough for butterflies.  All of a sudden, I saw a fairly large mammal, the size of a springer spaniel, emerge from the moist swale between the fairways.  Being a Kona boy, I knew in an instant that this was a pig.  We have them in our yard back in the land of Kalua pork.  

    Charles was quick to put a name on the swine...it was a javelina.  These wild and native pigs of the desert are apparently found in his neighborhood a few miles to the east, although he had yet to see one.  In fact, he had been warned that they were a trifle dangerous, and so he had made no effort to become personally acquainted.  

Gray Buckeye, iNaturalist

   As we were on the second story and perhaps fifty yards away, he felt very comfortable with this particular pig.  We watched as it nosed along for a while and then a golf cart appeared.  It was hard to tell if the golfers were chasing a ball or the javelina.  In any event, it fled, racing up the golf course like a greyhound.  Our pal Gemini tells us that javelinas, alternatively known as Collared Peccaries, can attain 25 mph.  Humans 12 mph and greyhounds 45, unless they are on the side of a bus, in which case the sky's the limit.  Regardless, this guy was moving way faster than the golf cart.

   The day quickly became hot, and we watched the golfers in their carts only their avocation.  About 9:30 I made my way to that mid-course swale.  In some spots there was standing water with cattails.  Elsewhere there was wild grass and a variety of trees, including a palm, probably not native.  I heard bull frogs and saw a few birds, but little else was moving.

    Two hours later, I tried again.  This time I darn near tripped over a small tortoise that had dug himself a form fitting indentation in the sandy soil. As I walked along, something moved in the grass ahead.  I approached it cautiously and found a dark butterfly well ensconced in the grass.  He was a handsome devil, with ocelli and red stripes on the wing.  There were several blades of grass between me and the bug, so at this point netting was out of the question.  I approached for a picture and watched him opening and closing his wings.  It was God-awful hot out there and I wondered if that helped keep him cool.  Maybe I should open and close my wings?  

Dowitchers on the pond, Riparian Preserve, Gilbert, Az.

   Eventually he flew, never to be seen again.  Google images quickly permitted me to identify him as a Gray Buckeye.  Our friend, Bob Hillis had sent me a picture of this fellow from southern Utah, and I was ever so jealous.  Now we were even, vis avis Gray Buckeyes.

   The following day we went to Gilbert, a relatively new city south of Phoenix.  In the process of putting in a gazillion houses with interspersed shopping centers, the planners developed a park in the desert with a number of large ponds defined by dikes that support trails and plantings, hopefully including native plants that would attract butterflies.  In their wisdom, the planners called this The Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch.  

   We arrived at the preserve at 10.  The entryway was blocked off in such a way that we had to make a second pass and dodge around some cones, ignoring a sign that said the park was closed for a special event.  Once we were parked, I ventured into the preserve to find a gathering breaking up and a nice lady who not only explained that the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast had concluded and the park was open, but gave me some delicious strawberries and tangerines.

White Pelicans and Black Neck Stilts in the desert.

    As we entered, we enjoyed a Gila Woodpecker flitting between a handsome stand of Saguaros, many with holes that might be home for a woodpecker, an owl or a wren.  Setting off on the trail between two ponds, we encountered a number of Gambel's Quail.  After about a hundred yards, the trees lining the trail opened up to reveal a shallow pond with a flock of medium sized, long billed sandpipers, which turned out to be long-billed Dowitchers.  The people who set up the park knew what we would see, for nearby there was a picture heralding the dowitchers.

   Immediately we encountered a couple of about our age, which is to say ancient.  They both had binoculars and they were wearing those modern khaki hats with a curved brim and a cloth in back to protect one's neck from the merciless sun. I noted that they looked like they knew the territory and the gentleman corrected me, saying they were from Eugene, Oregon and this was their first time at the park.  "First impressions can be deceiving," he said.  Perhaps he teaches philosophy at the university.  

    It was really hot, so mostly I wanted information on how long it would take us to complete the circuit we had planned.  All he could tell me was that a bit further up there was an intersection of trails.  

Anna's Hummingbird, Gilbert, Az. Chuck Hill, photo.

   His wife noted that just ahead they had seen some birds, which we decided were avocets.  They were really close, she said, by which she meant she had approached them until they flew away.  We got to that spot on the opposite pond in just an additional fifty yards.  there were white pelicans, black neck stilts and a heron, but no avocets.

   Just as we made it to the intersection, which was dominated by a complicated system of valves, presumably controlling the water level in the many ponds, Chuck spotted a hummingbird on a low branch in a convenient tree.  I got around to the side where this extremely trusting bird permitted us to observe him from about six feet and saw a gorgeous male Anna's.  Chuck was able to get a picture.  I cleaned it up a bit and you see it here.

   A short distance around the bend, we got another pond view and spotted the avocets.  It was still blazing hot, so the consensus was to get back to car and some blessed AC.  You may have noticed that we did not see a single butterfly, but that's OK., we scored some strawberries and met some interesting people.  It was a good day in Gilbert.  Praise the lord!

jeff