Colville, Sherman Pass and the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge

First of all, we should celebrate the fact that this cooperative effort between WBA and the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge was likely to be the largest Fourth of July butterfly count ever held in Washington! The 42 participants who gathered on June 29th were split into four groups to survey both familiar areas and those never previously studied in the all day campaign. We had a heck of a lot of fun out there, and had the privilege of showing two new Idie Ulsh scholarship recipients and their families the ropes!

It did seem to me, at least, that despite the fact that we added two new refuge species to its list, and despite the 4JBC list being longer by one species than in any previous count, overall butterfly numbers and species diversity were somewhat low across the board, with one exception: Vanessa cardui, the Painted Lady, which was ubiquitous and plentiful nearly everywhere, low and high. Thus, in a season with more moderate weather through springtime, we might expect to have seen even more butterflies with so many observers present. I also believe last year’s very poor (dry and smoky) summer partly explains our lower numbers overall. Whites and Sulphurs made especially poor showings. Less surprisingly, none of us saw Monarchs at any life stage, though these were seen in several previous counts.

A few further things are worth shouting out:

1- The Euphilotes discovered by Mike Munts is only provisionally counted as the “on heracleoides” species, because his group did not record which buckwheat plant was present with the single butterfly it found.

2-We do have a very good photo of the Eastern Tailed Blue (p 2) to verify this new locality.

3- The Hedgerow Hairstreak sighting reported by Mary’s group on Bisbee Mtn, Ferry County, appears to be a new county record. We have a sharp photo for verification.

4- The Edith’s Checkerspot hails from the very top of Sherman Pass, not actually a range expansion, but a butterfly lying right on the tiny disjunctive dot in the species map in Pyle and LaBar’s field guide.

5- Here’s a hunch we can consider to explain Edith’s Copper’s dramatic range expansion recently: it seems to be utilizing non-native Sheep Sorrel. Although I am not certain that I witnessed oviposition, I did watch a female repeatedly crawling up and down stems of this weedy plant, which were plentiful wherever we found the butterfly.

By way of concluding, I want to say very enthusiastically “Thank you!!” to Mary Schu, Lora Langford and Sue Orlowski, the 3 person event planning team that made this remarkable weekend possible! Many, many folks at the conference joined me in singing their praises.

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