2019 WBA Very Wet Spring Field Trip Reports

Rescheduled! Cancelled! Rescheduled!

Yakima Training Center field trip rescheduled May 11

The Department of Defense Yakima Training Center (YTC) occupies 327,000 acres of beautiful shrub-steppe at varying elevations and habitats near Yakima. Our cancelled April date was moved due to poor weather. So on May 11 ten “vetted” WBA members visited this expansive area to conduct a butterfly survey.

*Euphilotes “battoides” sphaerocephalum* blues. (M. Weiss)

Large Marble. Compare to Becker’s White and Island Marble below. (M. Weiss)

This continued the relationship begun by David James last year to document butterflies on the acreage and allowed us to survey unsampled areas of our state. The property has many rare plants, a sage grouse lek, and the flowers were stunning while we were there. Many said the flowers alone would have been worth the trip. We found an unnamed blue on Eriogonum thymoides that has only been detected at a few other locations in our state. Twelve species were seen including the Euphilotes “battoides” sphaerocephalum feeders, Anise Swallowtail, Becker’s White, Desert Marble, Large Marble, Silvery Blue, Gray Hairstreak, Juba Skipper. We learned that visitor passes are available to the general public. And they have a tour of the sage grouse mating in the spring given to a group selected by lottery. We all enjoyed the day in so many ways.

Watch Al Wagar’s video of the trip.

Swakane Canyon creative rescheduled May 24

A quick creative reschedule allowed a potentially rainy and cancelled field trip to Reecer Canyon on May 24 become a mostly sunny trip to Swakane Canyon one day earlier. The canyon road is not for vehicles with low clearance. It is narrow, full of serious pot holes and rocks, and is a very slow drive. But we were well rewarded for our efforts. Puddling was occurring in large numbers, another reason why the drive was slow.

We were bedazzled by the bodacious, blizzard-like bounty of butterflies we found there. At one point we had someone walking before the car to sweep the butterflies away! We also had a scout checking to see if it was “worth” getting out for new puddling activity as we were stopping often and we wanted to get further back into the canyon! We saw 29 species of butterflies and several day flying moths. There were many Pacuvius Duskywings. This was a good year for them in many locations. We saw nine species of Blues including the Arrowhead Blue, Melissa’s Blue and Acmon Blue. A few of the others we saw were the Western Green Hairstreak, Northern Cloudywing, Common Sootywing, Common Checkered Skipper and Common Roadside Skipper. It was a grand day and nice to see species less often seen. Several species were new for some of the participants.

Spiva Butte Preserve Field Trip Rescheduled June 9 Melanie Weiss

After a weather reschedule, WBA returned to Spiva Butte on June 9. It is now Spiva Butte Preserve, having achieved this deserved status due to the hard work of Ferdi Businger.

The Chelan-Douglas Land Trust is managing it, and Ferdi has been named the Site Steward. This prime shrub-steppe habitat has a four-acre lake, three springs, a diversity of birds, plants, animals and butterflies in addition to a sage grouse lek nearby. Once again Ferdi graciously showed us around this stunning property. A few of us stayed on his private land bordering the preserve the night before under a star-filled sky.

We were fortunate this year to see the Silver-bordered Fritillary flying in good numbers along with the Garita Skipperling (which opened its wings like a fan unfolding), Coronis Fritillary, Northern Crescent, Arrowhead Blue, Ruddy Copper, Large Marble…28 species in all. Several of us climbed the butte at the end of the day for hill toppers. It was a special day for everyone.

Note: Visitation is with permission only.

Cascades Butterfly Project White “Wanderers” July 21 Melanie Weiss

We had an interesting beginning of data collection on the Naches Loop Trail at Mt. Rainier for the 2019 season of the Cascades Butterfly Project. We survey a 1,000 meter section of the trail divided into five transects. On July 21, the first survey of the season, along the first transect, Regina Johnson netted a Becker’s White, a shrub-steppe butterfly. We were in alpine meadows at about 5,500 ft. We saw two more whites fly by. Then in the second transect, four whites flew by and I photographed a Western White. By the end of our survey, 20 whites had flown through the five transects. We netted a second Becker’s White in the last transect. I have been collecting data on this trail for many years and had never seen the Becker’s White on the trail before. Whites rarely are seen on this trail.

When I looked at the summary data of CBP’s Annual Counts since 2011, only 5 whites had been detected on the transects at Naches. We had detected 20 in one day. According to Jon Pelham, there is one other park record for a Becker’s White from the Box Canyon area in 2016. They are “wanderers”, not migrators, and most likely came from the Tieton Basin as a nice corridor runs between the mountains from the city of Naches to Chinook Pass. The Western White is the more common white seen on the transects in the park. The Becker’s White may sometimes wander with the Western White and show up together as it did that day. However, the Western White has a range from sea level to high alpine meadows and survives well at that higher elevation. I have seen the Western White each week since our first visit. Whites haven’t been present in such large numbers, but there have been several on the subsequent visits, and Western Whites have been the ones that have been netted or photographed. According to Jon P., the Becker’s White cannot survive at low temperatures. I have not seen them since our first visit on July 21. They could still be present, but I haven’t netted one. On that first day we were seeing the second generation of the Becker’s White. And according to David James, they had been seen in good numbers all over the valley due to the late spring and early summer being a bit cooler so the host plants were in fairly good condition.

Their first generation did not demonstrate such a strong showing. It has been exciting to experience the surprising places that these white “wanderers” appear.