Watching Washington Butterflies with Bob Pyle: Number Forty Two

Growing up in Colorado as a young lepidopterist, I had the benefit of not only Holland’s classic Butterfly Book and Klotz’s excellent Peterson Field Guide to Butterflies East of the Great Plains, but also to a superb state book: The Butterflies of Colorado, by F. Martin Brown, Donald Eff, and Bernard Rotger. Published in 1957 by the Denver Museum of Natural History, this book came to me from my father for Christmas, 1958, and my life was never the same again.

Colorado Butterflies enabled me to know what had been found in the state to date, to compare it with what I could go out and find for myself, and to see how I could make new discoveries of my own to advance the state of butterfly knowledge in my home state. The beguiling photographs of specimens were in black-and-white, which left lots of room for the imagination, and forced close attention to detail. Brown was a learned teacher of both depth and great breadth, and I always felt his clear and precise text showed respect for the intelligence of his readers, even a kid like me. I practically memorized whole pages, and it became my model.

I had several other state butterfly books too-Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Maine-and while Brown was mine, I read them all. It seemed to me a great boon to have such a gospel for one’s passion, and I felt fortunate to have the best. So when I went away to college in the Pacific Northwest in 1965, and found there were no handbooks for either Washington nor Oregon butterflies, it struck me as a great absence on the local scene. It wasn’t long till I began to imagine doing something about it. Happily, I wasn’t the only one who felt this gap and wanted to fill it. When Jonathan Pelham and I began collecting together in 1967, the need for a Washington book quickly arose in our exchanges. And when Jon organized the first meeting of Washington butterfly enthusiasts in Seattle in 1968, the making of such a book emerged high on our agenda.

Soon, two other conditions furthered the embryonic cause. First, I became active in the Seattle Audubon Society, and got to know its doyenne, Hazel Wolf. At the annual SAS spring birding gathering at Wenas Creek, Hazel introduced me to Professor Earl Larrison of the University of Idaho. The two of them managed what were known as the Trailside Series of natural history guides, most of them written by Larrison, and published by SAS. Wolf asked me whether I might be interested in writing a contribution to the series, about butterflies. Of course I was! Particularly because by this time my ambitions as a writer were growing. Second, I had entered the UW College of Forest Resources as a master’s student under Professor Grant W. Sharpe in the field of Nature Interpretation. It occurred to me, after floating several other abortive topics, that I might be able to fashion a master’s thesis in the form of an interpretive field guide to Washington butterflies.

Given the unconventional nature of the topic, and that it would be more applied and practical than research oriented, it was an uphill battle to convince my committee: Grant Sharpe, Wildlife Biologist Richard Taber, Forest Entomologist Bob Gara, and-get ready for it-Forest Recreation Professor J. Alan Wagar, Jr.! There was some concern that, as an academic thesis, my book might short science and original research in favor of popular appeal. That was reasonable, because my point was to make butterflies available to people as a recreational resource in the way that birds had al- ways been. On the other hand, I also intended to write the first American book to emphasize butterfly watching alongside sensible collecting, and the first field guide to be illustrated with photographs of living butterflies, all while following the set principles of nature interpretation. My aim was “to enhance enjoyment of butterflies, to reveal butterflies to the reader and to provoke his or her curiosity about them.” I saw the audience as “anyone who wishes to add the butterflies to his or her repertoire of appreciative outdoor pursuits.” As such, it seemed original and fully defensible as a thesis topic. Finally, my committee concurred in my plan, and approved my plan.

As for research materials, I had Ben Leighton’s 1946 master’s thesis, essentially an annotated checklist of Washington butterflies; access to the Burke Museum collection, and the data bases of Washington butterfly records being kept by Jon Pelham in Seattle and Jon Shepard in Berkeley (and that, in 1970, was a memorable visit!). Then there was all the published literature, especially by E. J. Newcomer, and the field experience and collections of Don Frechin, Dan Caney, John Hopfinger (see my two preceding columns), and other Washington lepists. Entomology professor Melville Hatch (founder of the Seattle bug group, Scarabs) and my committee read drafts for me, as, of course, did Jon Pelham. I couldn’t have written it without his and Jon Shepard’s help.

And then there were the photographs! In the spring of 1970, I went forth with the simple photographic gear I’d managed to assemble, and began to shoot the requisite photographs. Remember that very few people were photographing butterflies in those days. I had a tiny budget-shoestring doesn’t begin to say it. This is the set-up I settled upon: an ancient Exacta SLR camera body; a three-inch hollow extension tube; a cheap 300 mm Vivitar telephoto lens; and a stock of high-speed Ektachrome film, to be used hand-held with natural light. My first excursion, in late March, took me to southwest Washington and netted one species: the margined white, my first photo.

That summer I would travel all over the state, both taking pictures and seeking new records and knowledge to fill out my species accounts. I was also employed as an interpretive photographer for Washington State Parks and Snohomish County Parks, which helped me to get around and to buy film. I’ll never forget setting off for the East Side one June evening, camping near Stevens Pass, then snapping Indra Swallowtails at gravel along the Icicle River in the morning; or the flotilla of immobile Pale Tiger Swallowtails lined up at mud on a logging road where gyppos were salvaging cedar. In July, my brother was hospitalized in LaGrande, Oregon, following a bad accident, so I spent weeks there in between my other trips. This resulted in many of the photos in the book originating in the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon.

Considering that this was my first experience with butterfly photography, and my primitive gear, it is surprising how many species I managed to shoot that summer. And they weren’t that bad, some of them surviving into Cascadia in 2002.

Even so, it didn’t go entirely smoothly for the book from there. My committee held my feet to the fire to ensure scientific accuracy, and clamped down somewhat on what they considered overly familiar language (I’m looking at you, Brother Al!). This was no doubt right, but it meant I had to take the manuscript with me on my Fulbright year in England in 1971-72 for another draft, and then return to the university for spring quarter of 1973 to complete it for the M.Sc. Meanwhile, there were problems with the publisher, as well. Any number of issues arose over printing the color photographs, the budget, and changing SAS Board members with different priorities. At one point I traveled to Healdsburg, California, to meet with Vinson Brown, the legendary natural history author and publisher at

Naturegraph Press. I almost went with Naturegraph. But then SAS came around, under Hazel’s iron influence, and we finally signed a contract.

I still had to take the manuscript to Yale with me in the fall of 1973, for one final polish (and to restore some of the more colorful language!). I regret failing to ask my major professor at Yale, Charles Remington, to read it prior to publication, as it would have saved me from a number of errors. I guess I was afraid to have it torn up once again. When I gave him the published work, he congratulated me, but didn’t spare the red ink, even after the fact. The book was designed and laid out by the publications committee back in Seattle. In April, 1974, I drove with fellow grad students back to Seattle for the book launch. At last it was a reality: Watching Washington Butterflies: An interpretive guide to the state’s 134 species. including most of the butterflies of Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia, took flight.

My first look at it gave me a shock, as I had expected my photograph of a Zerene Fritillary on a thistle, and there was a painting of the same scene instead. It seems the original photo had too little contrast for the bigger format, so Pat Evans whipped up the pleasant illustration to take its place. My chagrin at this was overborne by the thrill of holding the very first copy of my very first book. We put on a book-signing at J. K. Gill Books & Office Supplies, another first for me, and maybe the most exciting of the many hundreds that have followed.

But that wasn’t all. The night before that signing, Hazel and the committee and I were applying stickers to the inside front covers nigh unto dawn. The printer, Binford & Mort, had omitted the frontispiece: a fine pen-and-ink drawing of Johnson’s Hairstreak on dogwood by JoAnne Pyle (now Heron). JoAnne also devised the beautiful Haida-style butterfly on the back cover of the book. The printer had also omitted the title and author on the spine of the book from the first 500 copies of the print run of 5,000. So those blank-spine copies are now the rarest of what has become rather an uncommon book. At this writing, there are nine copies available from Abe Books, ranging from $9.02 to $85.00.

While it can still be found, I recommend picking up a copy of WWB for your library, both for its historic value, and because it includes material that will not be found in either its much later, much bigger successor, The Butterflies of Cascadia, or the recent Timber Press Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest. I continue to hope, all these years later, that the final paragraph of its introduction may still ring true:

Watching Washington Butterflies is a tool for access to a most enthralling and wholly charming dimension of nature. I would be presumptuous to hope that it might become for some young naturalists the virtual bible that F. Martin Brown’s Colorado Butterflies was for me. But if the book helps you to see butterflies as necessary elements in an imperiled life matrix-or simply to see butterflies-it will have achieved its purpose.

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