Spokane Community College’s class

Spokane Community College’s class, “Finding Inland Northwest Butterflies”, posted a remarkable field day May 12th. Seven students were able to identify 27 butterfly species in a short, 2.5 mile hike, spending 3 1/2 hours in the field at Rutter Canyon, near the Little Spokane River. Students were delighted with sightings of four different Swallowtail species, 6 different Blues, 6 different Hairstreaks and a number of others, including the Arctic Skipper, the Red Admiral and Lorquin’s Admiral. Nice job, folks!

WBA at the Shrub-Steppe

On May 14 Melanie Weiss and Al Wagar set up our display at the Get Acquainted with the Shrub-Steppe (GISS) event at the Umtanum Recreation Area. We had a good flow of interested people at the display and people, especially kids, enjoyed our cage with live butterflies Melanie had caught the previous day, when the weather was decent. But the scheduled “butterfly walk for families” didn’t work well with the weather having changed to cool and overcast. Only about four families joined us and we saw no adult butterflies. We managed to see only a few larvae.

The snake exhibit right next to us was the big draw of the event. Youngsters who hadn’t been taught to be afraid were happily cuddling snakes from a 6-foot python down to a foot-long native Rubber Boa.

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