The Butterflies of Black Butte

Northern Checkerspot, Black Butte, June 2024

     A week or so ago, our family vacationed to together at Black Butte Ranch.   This was Sandra and myself, my younger son and his wife, two grandsons 8 and 6 and Riddles, an 11 month Irish Golden puppy.  The house I rented for this gathering was big enough to be comfortable and the weather was pleasant, affording us the option of expanding into outdoor living.  

    Black Butte, ten miles west of Sisters, Oregon, and ten miles east of Santiam Pass, is renowned for activities favored by a young family: unsurpassed bike paths, several community pools and two championship golf courses through which the bike paths meander.   It is also known for spectacular mountain scenery.

    What it is not known for is butterflies.  The entrance to the resort is about ten miles total to the Metolius Preserve, about which we have blogged recently.  But I have vacationed at Black Butte many times, most recently two years ago in late June, and never seen much in the way of butterflies.  But butterflies there were, and a few were most definitely blog-worthy.

    Before I get into the butterflies, I'm going to regale you with a personality profile.  My daughter in law is a force to be reckoned with. She is smart and athletic.  At Oregon State she majored in business, as did her husband, who in his youth was no stranger to the joys of Black Butte.  Tara comes form a hunting family; a pronghorn antelope which she dispatched as a teenager, looks down balefully from the wall of their living room.  And yet,  she holds academic zoologists in disdain.  I know this because last summer, when my bride and I visited the insect museum at Oregon State, Tara allowed that she and her fellow business majors would make fun of the zoology students as they entered those formalin scented halls.

   Now I sort of get this.  I was once a zoology major and I remember taking stock of the situation sometime during my junior year.  I suddenly realized  that I wasn't being trained to perform any sort of conventional job.  Was I going to collect animals like Gerald Durrell and run a zoo?  Not bloody likely!  

    That epiphany is a story in itself, but you can see their point.  They were being trained to make money, which they have done, and my lovely daughter in law retired at age 39 to begin training as a triathlete.  Both she and my 8 year old grandson made the podium in Bend, a week before this family vacation.

   Tara loved Black Butte, which afforded her the opportunity to bike and run and swim in a manner that bordered on excessive. Which is not to say that she was alone, as many  fit young women were engaged in a similar endeavor.  Did I mention that the scenery at the ranch is spectacular? 

Indra Swallowtail, Black Butte Lodge, June 2024

    At any rate, things took a curious twist.  In the process of engaging in those outdoor activities, Tara started noticing butterflies. 

  On the second day, Tara got us down to the lodge pool by texting us a serviceable picture of a checkerspot on the pool apron. 

    While delighting in the killer view of the Three Sisters,  Sandra and I immediately saw a pair of Mourning Cloak butterflies.  In this instance, these amazing nymphs were abiding in a willowy swale just outside the fence that separates the yuppie-infested pool from the natural environment.  This has been a very good year for Mourning Cloaks, but even so, to have one circling me just outside the lodge pool was surprising.  Looking like some demented geek, I attempted in vain to net the circling mourning cloak.  While I didn't catch the butterfly,  I did catch some disdainful looks from a trio of bikini-clad dudettes, presumably on the way back to their condo for an Italian soda, what ever the hell that is.

    Inside the pool area, Tara had found checkerspots puddling on the cement apron. Seemingly they were sucking up water splashed out by, among others, my grandchildren.  Colsen and Reid were putatively learning to dive while perfecting their cannonballs and belly flops.  Suffice it to say, there was plenty of pool water outside the pool.

    This unlikely scene begs the question, "Does it surprise you that a self respecting Chloesyne would suck up this chemical rich brew?  What sort of conjugal gifts were these male checkers putting together?" 

     Luckily there were some checkerspots nectaring on the tasteful native plantings just outside the pool and we got a some killer pictures al fresco. Although we had no luck netting a Mourning Cloak, it was no problem to capture one of these myriad checkerspots.

    The difference between the many species of checkerspots, Mother Nature's answer to the Rubik's Cube, is baffling.  Pyle and LaBar, in their book, which covers Oregon, Washington and southern B.C., describe 11 species of checkers.  And they provide pictures that would enable you to distinguish among this mob. 

   However, in the process of introducing the group, Robert Pyle writes, "the checkers are among the comeliest and most confusing butterflies.  To beginners they all look alike."  I would submit that it may not be just the beginners that have problems with this group.

   Sandra and I took our pictures back to the lab where, with the help of Riddles, we produced a couple serviceable pictures which you see here.  We sent our pictures to Bob's junior author, the usually dependable C. LaBar.  We were hoping for Hoffman's Checkerspot, which their field guide says are limited to the moist woods surrounding the Cascade Summit.  Sounds like we were in the right place.  But Caitlin had a dog in the fight, having previously declared that the only place we could possibly see Hoffman's was at her secret spot somewhere near Ellensburg, Wa.   

     Suffice it to say, Riddles was no match for Caitlin's dog and we have to be satisfied with her identification, however tainted.  Northern Checkerspot.  Case closed.  I was hoping for Hoffman's, and I'm still not sure that I was wrong, but Northern was a life butterfly, as well. Tick it off!

    As long as we were down by the lodge, we looked at the handsome native plantings surrounding that swanky edifice and found a veritable flock of Indra Swallowtails.  We delighted in watching these big beauties flying from blossom to blossom, nectaring on blue flowers at the end of long, sturdy stalks.  This plant reminded me of  lavender, but that's coming from a pathetic non-botanist.  

   We took our photos in the garden and took one back to the lab.  Not only was this a real treat, but we were able to take him right back to the lodge for release!  This is a fate that, for better or worse, not all of our subjects enjoy

   Before this season, I had almost desponded of seeing the Indra, but now I had seen it twice. Even Caitlin was pleased with this discovery.  This should be a seriously difficult butterfly, but if you are following the blog, you may remember that we saw one at the Inn at 7th Mountain outside Bend, as well.  2024 is a good year for several butterflies.

    That evening Tara, our peripatetic lepidopterist told us of many butterflies on the far northern edge of the property, through which she bicycled earlier in the day.  The next morning Sandra and I found our way to that spot, only to unearth more checkerspots.  We dispensed with them and headed into Sisters for some well deserved shopping.  After hitting a few art galleries we had lunch at a cowboy bar, where I had more than my share of brewskis, explaining the accompanying snapshot.  This tale fooled Reid and Colsen, but I hope not you.

    Once I was bailed out of the hoosegow, we went back to the ranch.  On a hunch, we stopped at the lodge and, Land o'Goshen, there was a bevy of tiger swallowtails enjoying those ersatz lavenders.  I netted one, and, as we were parked more or less illegally, took off before we ended up in the Black Butte jail.  The accompanying pictures of a cooperatively chilled Pale Tiger Swallowtail are pretty nice.  And what about all that orange on both surfaces of the hindwing?  Pyle and LaBar tell us that there are no subspecies of the Pale Tiger Swallowtail, but this is a beautiful and very colorful

Silk tent caterpillar.  June 2024

individual, to say the least.

   As our last evening at the ranch approached, and Sandra and I were sitting in the cabin with Riddles, we received a call from my son.  The family was biking back from the lodge pool when they were accosted by a lady on the bike path.  "You've got to look at these caterpillars!" she exclaimed. "And look at the chrysalises!  Isn't it amazing?"

    James and the boys got home and soon Sandra and I were off, being guided by James and Colsen.  We found a nearby spot to park and made our way to an aspen grove beside the bike trail.  Almost immediately we found caterpillars, both large and small, and what looked like a caterpillar in the process of pupating, which is to say molting into a chrysalis, and many chrysalises wrapped in silk.

Caterpillar going chrysalis?  Maybe not.

 

   We took many pictures including one of Colsen posing as a young lepidopterist.   As a reward he received an erudite lecture on the buttterfly life cycle.   Once we got organized, an impressive collection of photos was sent sent to Caitlin.  She wrote back quickly saying that these were silk tent caterpillars and those things we thought were chrysalises were possibly discarded skins. 

    Not wanting to disillusion Colsen, we left him in the dark.  As long as he got to watch the cartoon with the black bear and the blue lemmings, I don't think he could have cared less.

    And so ended our Black Butte lepidopteran vacation.  We had a great time, saw a life butterfly and just maybe recruited a new butterfly enthusiast.

jeff

Let's catch a butterfly!