Watching Washington Butterflies with Bob Pyle: Number Thirty Three

Well, it’s been a decidedly slow start for the second half of the first Washington Butterfly Big Year. Some years, Echo Azures appear as early as the third week in February here in southwesternmost Washington. Two years ago, in spring of 2016, there were six species of butterflies decking my cherry laurel blossoms in warm sunshine of mid-March. And one can normally find Sheridan’s Green Hairstreaks and other extreme earlies on the wing at least by April Fool’s Day on the East Side.

But this year, wouldn’t you know, was the second La Niña spring in a row (I misspoke in the previous column, calling it El Niño). In this swing of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO cycle, known as La Niña, the Pacific experiences cooler-than-usual waters, which can lead to cold, wet springs onshore. This has certainly been the case in 2017 and 2018, and the frankly crappy conditions for week upon week affected the dry side of the Cascades as well as western Washington. Crappy, that is, if your object is finding butter- flies! Which mine was.

So I was appalled to realize that the calendar had already reached mid-April, and I hadn’t undertaken a single field trip! Oh, I’d spotted the odd azure and white and anglewing on my own premises, but there seemed to be a statute in force militating against more than one nice day in a row, and things just couldn’t get going. So you can imagine that when a genuinely clear, warm day came, on April 18th, I couldn’t stand it, and had to get out in search of new species for the Big Year list. The only candidates I was likely to find close to home at that date were the Two-banded Checkered Skipper and the Brown Elfin, both present but local in the Willapa Hills.

Since time was limited with the sun unobstructed and hot, before the marine layer arose from the Columbia, I chose a locality quite near home: Eden Valley. This pastoral slot diverges from the Gray’s River estuary along little Crooked Creek, running back easterly into the southernmost Willapas, between the Gray’s and the Columbia itself. I remembered fantasies of restoring the old schoolhouse here as a home, back in ’75; now it is nowhere to be seen, having deliquesced into the wet green meadows of Eden. At the end of the valley, a gated logging road continues northeasterly into the private timberland. This stretch hadn’t been logged for a while, so the roadside vegetation was in good condition, including loads of Spring Beauty (Claytonia parviflora). This gave me high hopes, as did the balmy airs of the heavenly day.

I didn’t see any Large-leaved Avens (Geum macrophyllum), the chief hostplant for the checkered skipper in this district, but there was plenty of Dewberry (Rubus ursinus), which will also do. And farther up the steep logging road on a level side spur, lots of Salal, a favored larval host and nectar source for the elfin. Yet search as I might, neither species appeared. I reckoned that perhaps, in this particular year, when there have been so few warm days for chrysalides to cook, it was just too early. However, brilliant blue Echo Azures (Frost’s “sky flakes down in flurry on flurry,”) abounded as mint-fresh males. Margined Whites, heavily veined and some of them milky white and others buttery yellow be- low but again almost all males, glided up and down the road in their dozens as well.

Both butterflies visited the Spring Beauties, and the azures showed great astuteness in locating little spots of bird-lime on the pit-run rocks of the road: as many as seven to a cluster. So, while garnering nothing new, Big Year-wise, I got a splendid big butterfly hit to get me going out of the drizzly doldrums and to launch me onward into spring.

The next opportunity that presented itself came the following Sunday, April 22nd. I’d driven up the Columbia Gorge the night before, camping a little way west of The Dalles. By nine I had breakfasted, crossed the Biggs Bridge, and entered my target area, Rock Creek Canyon in Klickitat County. I had butterflied here on several occasions, but never in (relatively) early spring. Of course, things were farther along over here, with the Arrowleaf Balsamroot mostly past. But the Cheatgrass was still green and its awns too soft to stick in my socks, and Desert Parsley bloomed all over in carroty clumps of yellow. The first butterflies of the day flashed the same yellow and black as the many Meadowlarks piping into the crisp cool morning air: Anise Swallowtails, products of the parsley, flipping and gliding over the full-running creek.

What I especially hoped to find here were Sheridan’s Green Hairstreaks, though I suspected I might be too late, this low. A few miles up I began seeing whites along the road, and several of these would have been new for me too. But they were devilishly difficult to catch, keeping just beyond my reach when I leapt from the car, seldom giving a clean stroke of the net, and never, ever alighting. Slowed from a recent illness and rusty on my network, I was no match for them. At last I managed to net two orange-tips, formerly Sara’s, but now Julia’s (since Todd Stout’s recent revision of western Anthocharis). The male was small, but the pale yellow female truly minute–no bigger than a Dainty Sulphur! And then a much bigger white found its way into my net, a beautiful green-veined Becker’s. Julia was new but Becker was not. I really think I saw both Desert and Large Marblewings as well, but I certainly couldn’t prove it.

A few miles up the road I came in view of the Rock Creek Longhouse of the Klickitat/Yakama people. Many families had gathered down by the Longhouse for their big spring pow-wow. I would have loved to see the dances and hear the drumming, if I were welcome; but that would be the day, and the day was for butterflies. All morning and afternoon, Indian people continued to pour down the road from the north.

As I rose in elevation, moisture, flowers, and butterflies all increased. The Garry Oaks were just leafing out, and below one clump, a crisp new Propertius Duskywing basked on a cattail stalk–mouse-gray forewings, mink-brown hindwings. Another new one! These became common still farther up-canyon, especially around mud where water seeped underneath the oaks.

Ochre Ringlets, Silvery Blues, and Mourning Cloaks also appeared, and a Western Tiger Swallowtail or two. And then came the real spectacle of the day: a swallowtail soiree at a long puddle at the edge of the dusty road. The day had grown warm, verging on hot, and a hot day with mud in the mountains usually means butterflies. There beneath the basalt rimrock fluttered numbers of bright fresh Anises, crowding about for the salts, shouldering one another for the best spots. And then, wow! a few smaller Short-tailed Black Swallowtails, also known as Indra, sneaking in among the larger Zelicaons. I hadn’t seen Indra for years, and they are such a sight: coal-black, shot with rows of small yellow spots ending in red and blue punctuations by the tiny tails. One of them was another dwarf, no larger than a sulphur, and barely tailed at all. This was my seventy-third butterfly for the Big Year, the third new species for the day.

And it would be the last. A stony gully crowded with g’nums produced a brief up-down of what very well might have been a greenie, in a perfect habitat for Sheridan’s; but it did not deign to appear again. The sight of both Julia and Propertius nectaring on Fiddleneck on a wall of Starflowers was worth the drive, but of course they were reiterations of the day’s novelties. Up at the top of the road, where it intersects with the Bickleton-Goldendale Road in a sharp hairpin curve, the streamside shrubs offered an azure or two, but I couldn’t get a good enough look-see to tell whether they just might be the very local Celastrina lucia.

From there I climbed out of the canyon westerly toward Goldendale, but diverted north again on a little road called Old Mountain. This begins paved, goes gravel, then goes all to hell. A truly abominable narrow trackway of rocks, holes, and mud, this so-called “road” carries one up onto Monson Prairie. This interesting mounded savanna was sparsely flecked with two of my favorite spring wildflowers, Showy Phlox and Desert Pansy, but all chopped up into ranchettes with doublewides and dogs. Persevering, one finally escapes this morass and joins the much better Three Creeks Road. One of my goals had been to reach the highlands southeast of Satus Pass and below the Yakama Reservation. Turning right took me easterly across beautiful high prairie, near 4,000 feet, abloom with a different balsamroot, perhaps Hooker’s. The piney forest and open grassland here is undeveloped and unfenced, but all signposted “No Trespassing” by “WPT.” That turns out to be Western Pacific Timber, which owns 93,000 acres in the Simcoe Block of Klickitat County, all off limits east of SR 97. Too bad; it looks like great habitat.

In any case, though the day had grown late and cool, one more butterfly would yet grace this first big outing of the spring. Just as I’d turned around and headed back west toward Goldendale and home, a lone California Tortoiseshell cut the chill air in the late sunshine and drifted over me, dropping toward the canyon below.

I dropped down too, first to the 97, then Goldendale, the Gorge, Stevenson, and a glass of good Walla Walla red to toast my twelve-fifteen species for the day, three of them new for the WBBY. Next: Klittikat County with Branch, Pelham, and Droppers. And so on toward summer, and the many forays to come!

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