Watching Washington Butterflies With Bob Pyle: Number Four

I will never forget that hot last day of July, 1975, in deepest Asotin County, where the Grand Ronde River meets the Snake. My field team was exploring little-sampled sections of the state to fill in species records for my research on eco-geography of Washington butterflies. Working in the very corner of the state, near a major intersection of butterfly freeways (= rivers), I knew we had a chance of finding something new. So when I spotted a deep russet nymph that I didn’t recognize, I initially imagined it might be a question mark (Polygonia interrogationis)- way out of its eastern range! But it was another rarity: offspring of a viceroy paired with a Lorquin’s admiral and a viceroy (Limenitis lorquiniXarchippus). Few such hybrids were known.

Imagine my surprise moments later when a tiny yellow butterfly appeared before me. I knew what it was immediately, and shouted “STATE RECORD!” even before I netted it. My helpers were finding them too. Between us, we encountered seven fresh males of the dainty sulphur or dwarf yellow (Nathalis iole): the first ever recorded for the state, and one of only three finds in the entire Pacific Northwest. N. iole is a southern resident that irrupts into the North every year for several generations, then dies back in the fall. The immigration peaks in the Midwest, with only a very few outliers reaching the Northeast or Northwest. I’ve been studying this species’ northerly movements ever since, and may someday actually publish on the subject. In the meantime, this exciting find gave me a taste for new state records, and left me primed to find some more.

Few of us can resist the allure of discovery, and when it comes to a state butterfly club, what calls to us more (unless it be a brand new species to science!) than a new member of our state check-list? My next opportunity, unlike the near-random find of the dainty sulphur, came as a protracted search. From the Army Corps of Engineers’ Washington Atlas, which roughly mapped a number of rare plants, I learned that golden chinquapin (Chrysolepis chrysophylla) barely dipped into southern Washington. If we could find the plants, we might also find the beautiful golden hairstreak (Habrodais grunus), which feeds on the small chestnut relative.

Several expeditions ensued. The first couple were wild goose chases, because the Corps’ Atlas mistakenly placed the plants in Clark County. Another, with Jon Pelham, aborted in deep snow when we went looking for winter eggs in the foothills of the correct county, Skamania. Finally, Prof. Art Kruckeberg published a paper on chinquapin in Washington, situating two stands: one along Hood Canal, the other near the foot of the Big Lava Bed in Gifford Pinchot National Forest. No sooner did Sally Hughes, John Hinchliff, and I arrive on the scene, on September 7, 1980, than the long-sought butterfly obliged. Within moments of our arrival, John spotted one, I netted another, Sally found eggs-and we had our state record. As with the dwarf yellow (and most such discoveries), the finding of the golden hairstreak was a collaborative rather than a solo effort. We’re still looking in the Hood Canal chinquapin stands.

The sachem skipper (Atalopedes campestris) had long been known as another northward immigrant in summers, well into the Willamette Valley. After Maurita Smyth found the first one in Portland, I started looking in southwesternmost Washington. We’d often seen it on fall garden flowers in Corvallis during the Halloween meetings of the Northwest Lepidopterists Association, so I took to checking marigold patches along the Lower Columbia in fall. On an autumn day in 1990, Thea had business in a tall office building just outside the Vancouver Mall. Waiting below, I noticed tawny skippers on the flowerbeds. Most of them were woodland skippers (Ochlodes sylvanoides), as expected, but one looked larger. Leaping out of the car, I saw that it was bigger, and bore the distinctive glassy forewing spot of a female sachem! I had no net along, but fashioned a tiny one from a cotton pecan bag and a stiff piece of wire borrowed from a nearby electrician. Woodlands kept putting up the sachem, but I finally got a clear shot–and the state record! Not long after that, as we know, sachems colonized Washington in a big way, becoming the first species of butterfly demonstrated (by Lisa Crozier) to expand its range in response to warming trends. Now it occurs up and down the Columbia and tributaries at least to Carson, Yakima, and Othello.

Next came another immigrant skipper, again following a concerted search along our borders, but this time we found it on the northern edge rather than the southern. The European skipperling or Essex skipper (Thymelicus lineola) is our only other widespread introduced species, besides the cabbage white (Pieris rapae), in North America. Thea had found the state records in both Montana and Idaho in recent years, and it was known to occur in B.C. Merrill Peterson told me that he’d seen it along the freeway verges south of Vancouver, B.C. So after many searches in all the other corners of the state, we traveled to Blaine for a look-see. There was nothing but a cabbage white in the sprayed gardens around the Peace Arch. But when we checked out a weedy powerline right–way just east of Blaine, a grassy corridor coming directly out of Canada a few hundred yards away, we spotted slow little golden skippers right off the bat. To preserve her Northwest skipperling streak, I made sure Thea netted the first one. She tripped on a hidden cable going for it, but caught it on the way down for our fourth state record, and her third for that species. Now if she can find one in Oregon, she’ll have the grand slam! T.lineola has since spread south, but more slowly than I expected: only as far as the Birch Bay-Lake Terrell area so far (fide D. Nunnallee). Happy on Timothy and reed canary grass, it will surely keep going. David James’s discovery of the species in northeast Washington gives pause for concern for the rare native skippers in that region. On the Big Year, I found T. lineola enormously abundant on the Little Bigfoot in Montana, whereas woodland skippers and other grass skippers were almost absent.

The pattern of targeted pursuits continued, but even more so. As an early product of the ecological and revisionary work on the “dotted blue” group (Euphilotes spp.) that Andy Warren, Dave Nunnallee, Jon Pelham and others are engaged in (which is revealing several “hidden” state records by entirely different means!), Andy determined that we didn’t really have E. enoptes in Washington as we’d long thought. Instead, the things we’d called dotted blues (“E. enoptes“) were actually Columbia blues (E. columbiae, a name elevated from subspecific status). Andy suggested that if anyone could find its hostplant (Eriogonum nudum) in the state, he or she might well find true E. enoptes as well. How could we resist such a challenge? In the state herbarium data base, Thea and I found two records for the plant–one old, vague one in the Goat Rocks, and one specific, more recent one in the Tieton country–made by none other than our old mentor, Art Kruckeberg! So, going on yet another of Art’s botanical tips, we found the site, found the plant, and on our second visit, found the butterfly–all over it! Thea popped across the road and netted the first one. Since then, Dave Nunnallee and David James have found it in additional sites.

My final SR was the only one I pursued (and found) on my own. But even that depended on others-another tip from Andy, in fact, responding to a tip from Neil Bjorklund-who had spotted a western pygmy blue (Brephidium exilis) on the Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge on the Oregon side of the Columbia.

Andy challenged Washington lepists to go find it on the Washington side. I drove over there, camped, awoke to rain, and spent a sodden September day tapping up just a sulphur, a monarch, and a damp juba or two.

Then, after 7 p.m., the sun came out and illuminated a brilliant rabbitbrush and a nearby Russian thistle. I tapped both, and up from the Salsola popped a little bit of glitter: Washington’s first (and still sole) pygmy blue!

Each of these discoveries has been both exciting and fulfilling, adding to the sum total of our knowledge about Washington butterflies while affording the satisfaction of successful hunts and memorable days afield. Additional finds await, especially as ranges continue to expand northward with climate change. In my next column, I will predict the next six state records that we–or you!–might find.

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