Butterflies in Central Oregon Part One

     Sandra and I just spent five days in Central Oregon.  For the first four, we hosted my son and grand son in a house at Black Butte Ranch.  Black Butte is eight miles form Sisters.  Once a little cow town with a world class view of snow capped peaks, Sisters is now a discouraging sprawl of houses and condos crammed in cheek to jowl, tacky shops and over priced restaurants.  Bummer, dude.

     In the other direction, Black Butte is a thirty minute drive from one of the premier butterfly spots in the northern part of the state.

Grampa teaches Jeffery fly fishing in the prettiest place on earth

     Black Butte Ranch is actually a large, resort, (which prior to 1980 might have been a ranch) with swimming pools, tennis courts, the best bike paths on the planet and a lake for fly fishing which sports that view of the Three Sisters to which I alluded earlier.  A house rental at the ranch isn't cheap, but astonishingly, it is little more than renting a room at an "inexpensive" motel in Sisters.  Heaven help us.

    We timed our stay to correspond with spring butterfly season.   We came three weeks later last year; in early July 2021 the smoke from forest fires was so thick you could not see the mountains.  But the butterflies were good then and we hoped they would be even better this year.

Silver Spot Skipper on Azalea, Samsung phone.  June 2022

    On our first afternoon we went down near the horse corral at the ranch.  The trail ride out of the corral leads by a swampy creek, so here we had a moist environment and stinky horse poop, both of which butterflies should love.  It took me only a few minutes to net a Pale Swallowtail.  This handsome butterfly turned out to be common in Central Oregon.   We did not see it last year and as our time progressed we found surprisingly little overlap with what we saw last year and what we found in 2022.

    This year we have engaged in a friendly rivalry on the internet.  Enthusiasts take pictures of their findings and post them on a facebook page, Butterflies and Moths of the Pacific Northwest.  As the host of the page lives in Ashland, she includes Northern California in the region, so we struggle to keep up.  In the process we have learned a couple tricks about butterfly photography.  

Pale Swallowtail in resting position fresh out of the refrigerator.

   This year we are using nets (as opposed to sneaking up on the butterflies and trying for an al fresco picture.)  If you aren't using a net you probably aren't making the best possible identifications.  Sandra is way better at handling the butterflies, so she is frequently the one to transfer them to a reasonably priced receptacle.  Four weeks ago we were attempting to photograph the butterflies in a bottle, which rapidly evolved into a stemless wine glass.  

    This still wasn't getting us the best results, so we asked our mentor, Daniel Rubinoff, PhD, what we should do to take better pictures.  Dan said that he hates taking pictures, but if we wanted to get the best results, we should take a cooler into the field, or take the butterflies home and pop them in the fridge.  On our next outing, we captured the most common skipper in the area and brought him home.  The next morning (remember this is Portland and it has been a cold, wet spring) we took him out and put him on an azalea in front of our condo.  He stayed put for over an hour and we were able to try out three different cameras under these ideal conditions. Sandra's Samsung cell phone was the winner and so most of our photos are taken with her camera / phone.   

Pale Swallowtail Papilio eurymedon, Black Butte Ranch June 2022

   And so...we brought the Pale Swallowtail back to Glaze Meadow 112 and put him in the refrigerator.  The next morning it was light enough for photography by about 8:30.  We brought the butterfly out and placed him on a leaf.  we are not botanists and leave it up to you to identify the plant.  He perched quietly in resting position.  After about five minutes he spread his wings and slowly rotated his body so that his wings were receiving the maximum amount of sun.  It is well known that butterflies use their wings to as solar collectors but it was fascinating to watch.  

    A minute or so later the most amazing thing happened.  He began shivering his wings.  Very few butterflies are able to shiver, which warms the muscles.  This went on for about five minutes. We both took movies of the shivering but neither of our movies will load onto the blog.   Here is a youtube video that shows this phenomenon.  It is nowhere near as nice as ours, but gives you an idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eNHB-sYdc8 

    It is interesting that this was by far the most common large butterfly we saw in Central Oregon last week, June 22 to 26.    Only three weeks later in 2021 we did not see a single individual.  By the first week of July the Pale Swallowtail had finished its spring cycle and was no longer flying.

    We saw lots more butterflies and two more blogs should follow this one.  Sandra and I hope your summer vacation is as nice as ours and that you see lots of interesting critters.

jeff