Watching Washington Butterflies with Bob Pyle: Number Twenty Seven

Nowadays, when most people reach first for a mouse or a touch-screen to seek information about anything, when apps substitute for paper pages and a Google search for a bookshelf search, we run the risk of forgetting about the rich legacy of written works that have gotten us where we are in our understanding of Washington butterflies. We may also miss the power of the deeper texts to illuminate our fauna beyond the basic facts, and the charm and fun of reading the individual author’s take on the creatures for whom we all share a mutual love. Fortunately, books last, and remain faithfully available when their fickle owners tire of digital blandishments and long to read the actual printed lines, and between them too. And still more happily, good books continue to appear, their medium refusing to bow or be cowed by mere electrons. Which is not to criticize all the online resources-where would we be without butterfliesofamerica.com? But just to say that our world as butterfliers is richer and better served by using our libraries as well as our terminals, telephones, and tablets. With that in mind, I thought it might be fun and perhaps instructive to take a field trip through the titles that have comprised our library of Washington butterflies over the years.

Of course there were various expeditionary reports-the Hayden, the Transcontinental Survey, and so on-that touched upon first encounters with the state’s butterflies, as well as mentions in some of the early continental or western volumes (Edwards, Wright, et cetera). But it is not my point here to survey the complete bibliography. The earliest actual treatment of the state’s whole fauna was The Butterflies of Washington by Lucia Eola Edson, her thesis submitted for a Master of Arts degree at the University of Washington in 1913. (My grandmother and great aunt were at the university then too, and I have to wonder whether they knew Lucia.) I have only the title page and introduction, so I do not know how many species Edson attributed to the state at that time. Her work was based largely on the specimens in O. B. Johnson’s collection, which Jonathan Pelham still curates at the Burke Museum. The full thesis needs to be found and copied. Through the wonders of Google (of course), I learned that Lucia Eola Edson was born in 1887 at Rutland, Vermont, attended Amherst and Mt. Holyoke colleges, and after her UW Masters, took her Ph.D. at Columbia University, had a career as a chemist, and lived until 1980!

The next entry on the scene was also called The Butterflies of Washington and was also a Masters thesis at the UW, in Biology. It was written by Ben V. Leighton, of Shelton, working under Melville Hatch, and awarded in 1946. The booklet, published as UW Publications in Biology Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 47-63, by UW Press, became the basis for all of our subsequent studies. Leighton included records from seven major collections (including those of Hopfinger, Clarke, and Frechin) and conducted extensive field collecting himself. His story is long and complicated, and may be read in the essay “Ben Leighton and the Shelton Elfin” in The Butterflies of Cascadia.

The papers of E. J. Newcomer published in the Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society mostly through the 60s and 70s, recounting his studies in and beyond Yakima County, virtually constitute a book, and should be bound that way someday. But there was no additional actual book for almost thirty years after Leighton’s work.

In the late 60s, Pelham and Pyle met with Don Frechin, Dan Carney, Michio Kimura, Mike VanBuskirk, and other Washington collectors to discuss a book-length treatment of the state’s butterflies. Later I went to UC Berkeley to obtain Jon Shepard’s extensive data. The result became yet a third UW Master of Science (in Nature Interpretation, College of Forest Resources), as well as my first book: Watching Washington Butterflies, published by the Seattle Audubon Society in 1974. It was the first American field guide to take an interpretive approach, to encourage butterfly watching alongside (not instead of) careful collecting, and to employ photographs from life (although these were very simple compared to today’s digital bounty). WWB served as the only available Northwest field guide at the time, and for some years to come.

This situation was relieved and augmented first by William A. Neill’s selective but handsome and useful Butterflies Afield in the Pacific Northwest (Pacific Search) in 1976, using Doug Hepburn’s excellent color photos from nature. Ernst J. Dornfeld’s inclusive and encyclopedic Butterflies of Oregon came along from Timber Press in 1980, furnishing much more information for many of our species, presented in Ernst’s fine style, along with many halftone photos of specimens and habitats. This was soon followed by James R. Christensen’s Field Guide to the Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest (U. Idaho Press, 1981). This was the first to attempt description and figures of the entire region’s butterfly fauna, illustrated by photos of live individuals in the field as well as pinned specimens from Shepard’s collection. These books gave us excellent tools for advancement of butterfly study in the state, but none more than John Hinchliff’s essential Atlas of Washington Butterflies (Oregon State U., 1996), showing the results of our first century of butterfly sampling in the form of his painstaking dot-distribution maps.

It would be twenty years until the next major field guide project came to fruition in The Butterflies of Cascadia (Seattle Audubon Society, 2002). First envisioned as a somewhat expanded and updated replacement for Watching Washington Butterflies, it became much more than that. With help from Jon Pelham, Paul Hammond, Andy Warren, Jon Shepard, and Dave McCorkle, among many others, and major roles played by Idie Ulsh, Dave Nunnallee, Richard Youel, and others of WBA, Cascadia emerged as one of the most ambitious regional field guides ever published. In addition to field photos by 33 photographers, specimen photos, and exquisite

specimen paintings by Denise Takahashi, it contained personal essays on every species as well as the strictly factual, detailed species accounts. All named subspecies were de- scribed. One partly revised edition appeared in 2007. SAS allowed the book to go out of print in the 20-teens.

Meanwhile, Bill Neill’s book was beautifully expanded, revised, and redesigned twice, as The Guide to Butterflies of Oregon and Washington (Westcliffe Pub., 2001) and Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest (Mountain Press, 2007). Between those and Cascadia, many new converts to butterflying had a sudden wealth of references to work from, Soon came another, in the imposing form of Robert E. Hardwick’s big Butterflies of Washington (2001). Enriched by Bob’s extensive and enthusiastic field research, elegantly illustrated from his meticulous collection and rearings, this was a real labor of love. Self-published, it is a fine reference for those who own it, but sadly never found its way into an affordable edition available to a much wider audience.

Though extra-limital, two magnum opuses must be included here. Crispin S. Guppy and Jon H. Shepard ‘s Butterflies of British Columbia (UBC Press, 2001) and Andrew D. Warren’s Butterflies of Oregon: Their Taxonomy, Distribution, and Biology (Gillette Museum, 2005) are so thorough, megalithic, and deep that they have transformed our regional butterfly scene. The BC book is the more elaborate and sophisticated publication in terms of design, while the Oregon volume has seldom been approached for its level of detail and insight-especially when it is noted that Andy Warren compiled this book in his spare time while performing doctoral studies in skipper evolution at OSU. Seldom has the variation within a region’s butterflies, and their biological and geographical foundations, been so meticulously parsed as here. Between these two books, our northern and southern faunas are far better defined and illuminated than before.

A third, more recent magnum opus covers the whole region, but is especially strong in Washington. Life Histories of Cascadian Butterflies (OSU Press, 2011) is an almost unbelievably fine and exhaustive account of all life stages, described, photographed, and placed in biological and ecological context, for virtually every species of butterfly in the region. Quoting from my own blurb on the back of the book, “The publication of James and Nunnallee, or “the Daves,” as we know them, is a matter for unreserved celebration, not only for lepidopterists and nature lovers of all stripes, but for anyone who cares about our butterflies’ lives, futures, conservation management, and the plants with which they have coevolved.” We are extremely fortunate to have these two beloved lepists among us, and their joint production. I don’t know a better treatment of any region’s immature butterflies, anywhere in the world.

While all these bigger books were coming along, a steady stream of little books, booklets, and pamphlets have been written and distributed, treating of the butterflies to be found in various parts of our state and adjacent areas. Each of these has proven more than useful to local naturalists, and has no doubt snagged additional devotees for butterfly study and appreciation. Here are some of them (I’m sure I will miss others): Butterflies of Lowland King County (Sharon J. Collman et al, WSU/King Co. Coop. Extension, 1986); Butterflies of the North Cascades (Denis Knopp & Lee Larkin, BC Wildlife Watch, 1998); Pictorial Guides to Butterflies of Chumstick Mountain and Butterflies of Fort Lewis and Puget Trough (Don Rolfs, 2000, 2001); North Coast Butterflies & Day-flying Moths: Life-size Photo Guide (David Lee Myers, N. Coast Land Conservancy, 2002); Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve Butterfly Guide (Colleen O’Shea, DNR/TNC, undated); Common Butterflies of the Puget Sound Region and Their Food Plants (David Droppers, WBA, undated); Butterflies of the San Juan Islands Checklist (Susan Vernon, Archipelago Press, 2005); Butterflies of the North Olympic Peninsula (Kristi Murray Knowles, Trafford Publishing, 2005); Vancouver Island Butterflies (Mike Yip & James Miskelly, Publ. Mike Yip, 2014); A Region Specific Guide to Butterflies of the South Puget Sound, Washington (Rod Gilbert & Ann Potter, Cascadia Prairie-Oak Partnership, 2014); and Field Guide to Okanogan County Butterflies (Caitlin C. LaBar, 2014, 2015).

And that is a good place to transition into the final category: butterfly books to come!

The next one will be Caitlin LaBar’s elaborate book on the butterflies of the Sinlahekin Valley, in Okanogan County, based on several years of intensive field study. Cait brings great skills in photography, mapping, text design, and field work to bear in what by all accounts will be a magnificent book, a model for any other regional faunist to aspire toward. In 2017, the Timber Press Field Guide to Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest will appear. Co-authored by Cait and my- self, it will replace The Butterflies of Cascadia without trying to be the same book-up to date taxonomically and in many recent findings, and still rich in stories, but more compact and concise. We hope it will be a field guide useful for the next twenty years. Finally, now that his invaluable Catalogue is well in hand (though updating it will always be a work in progress); we all hope that Jonathan P. Pelham will forge ahead with his envisioned comprehensive monograph on Washington butterflies. This definitive work-to-come brings us full circle, since Jon, in curating the collection at the Burke Museum, works among the very specimens that supported Lucia Eola Edson’s very first effort, more than 100 years ago. And what books will there be another 100 years hence?

(book cover photos from Amazon.com)

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