June 21 to July 21, 2025
By Regina Johnson
Our inaugural Big Butterfly Month is now concluded. Of course, any photos you post that were taken in the right date range will still go in the project, but I’m doing the analysis on observations uploaded by July 26.
What, you don’t know what that was? We made a Project on iNaturalist for people to post butterfly observations throughout Washington State from June 21 to July 21. It was an opportunity to see how many butterflies you could photograph in that time period, how many individual observations, and how many species. According to Caitlin LaBar’s newest guide, there are 156 species of butterflies in Washington. We got 112. Go us!
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/big-butterfly-month-washington-state
I don’t know about you, but I can see way more butterflies than I can photograph. I swear they can feel when I’ve just about got them in the viewfinder – and they’re off. Skippers, of course, are really uncooperative, being tiny to start with and skipping all over the place. Getting what shots I did of Dun Skippers was especially challenging, since they’re so dark, I could barely see them as they skipped all over the ground, and the slightest movement on my part sent them skipping off again. Margined Whites are also difficult to photograph, at least for me. They’re unnaturally bright! And they totally wash out in my photographs, a little patch of burning white that may or may not be a butterfly.
| Top 10 Observers: | Top 10 # of Species: |
|---|---|
| David James 383 | David James 86 |
| Lisa Hill 136 | John Baumann 58 |
| Regina Johnson 95 | Cheryl Bellin 46 |
| John Baumann 77 | Lisa Hill 40 |
| Cheryl Bellin 69 | Regina Johnson 33 |
| Tom Wysham 57 | Tom Wysham 33 |
| Karen Holtrop 56 | Bob Williams 31 |
| Melanie Weiss 49 | Nancy LaFramboise 30 |
| Bob Williams 49 | Karen Holtrop 30 |
| Nancy LaFramboise 47 | Melanie Weiss 27 |
| Autumnmeadowhawk 21 | |
| Mike Clarke 19 |
No surprise to anyone who knows him, but David James blew everyone else out of the water in this Project. He had the highest number of observations (383) and the highest number of species (86). And, of the 6 different Species of Greatest Conservation Need that were recorded, he had 4 of them – Monarch, Great Arctic, Sonora Skipper, and Propertius Duskywing. In fact, the only recorded SGCN he didn’t get are both Westside taxa, and most of David’s travels are east of, or in, the Cascades. You can see the advantage he gets from living in Central Washington, with easy access to great butterflying.
On that note, Karen Holtrop did a very impressive job considering that she lives in the North Olympics, about as re-mote from butterfly diversity as one can get in Washington, second only to the San Juan Islands I would say, or Forks. There’s decent butterfly diversity in the eastern Olympic meadows, given good weather (a crapshoot in that part of the world), and you don’t need a ferry to go somewhere else, just a very long drive. Karen got 3 species with only one observation, and 2 SGCN. She ranked 7th for number of observations and 9th for number of species – great job!
The Westside SGCN, that David didn’t get, were the Puget Blue, for Karen, and the Valley Silverspot, for me (Regina Johnson). The Puget Blue is a subspecies of the Boisduval’s, and the Valley Silverspot is a subspecies of the Zerene Fritillary.
| Top 10 Species # Observations | Species with just One Observation |
|---|---|
| Snowberry Checkerspot 45 | American Lady |
| Lorquin’s Admiral 44 | Arctic Blue |
| Clodius Parnassian 33 | Brown Elfin |
| Blue Copper 31 | Common Alpine |
| California Tortoiseshell 30 | Common Roadside Skipper |
| Cabbage White 29 | Green Comma |
| Western Tiger Swallowtail 29 | Julia Orangetip |
| Boisduval’s Blue 28 | Mourning Cloak |
| Common Wood-Nymph 27 | Pacuvius Duskywing |
| Hydaspe Fritillary 26 | Peck’s Skipper |
| Western Branded Skipper 26 | Puget Blue |
| Sylvan Hairstreak 22 | Sandhill Skipper |
| Thicket Hairstreak | |
| Valley Silverspot | |
| Vidler’s Alpine | |
| Western Arctic Skipper | |
| Western Pine Elfin |
The top place for number of species with only one observation, though, goes to Cheryl Bellin, with 6 species only recorded once: Common Alpine, Common Roadside-Skipper, Green Comma, Mourning Cloak, Vidler’s Alpine and Western Arctic Skipper. The first two, despite their names, are not common. Mourning Cloaks are, but they were pretty much out of season for our time period. The Vidler’s Alpine is one of those butterflies I could see but not photograph. They taunted me, dancing back and forth but never slowing. Cheryl is the better Butterfly Whisperer.
The four corners of our rectangular state can be pretty hard to get to. No one went to Cape Flattery, big surprise. Or to Metaline Falls, site of our 2023 Study Weekend; that would have been productive I’m sure, but a long drive from anywhere. Two people went to the Blue Mountains, site of our 2022 Study Weekend. One hardy soul went to Long Beach, though not specifically for butterflies. Good thing, since she says she only saw one butterfly the entire week she was there. But that one butterfly, a Western Tiger Swallowtail, is now immortalized on iNaturalist.
Tales and Outtakes from the Big Butterfly Month 2025.
Ants Marching; or Fun with Continual Exposure.
I often shoot on Continual Exposure with butterflies, since they’re moving all the time; it helps to get one good shot out of, I kid you not, sometimes 147. For a Woodland Skipper. Hey, it’s digital. And there were actually a number of useable shots there. Here, we get an ant crossing the bottom of the frame while a Field Crescent prances around on an oxeye daisy—82 shots of that. This was on an abandoned, south-facing road in the Olympics. I took along a friend who feels he’s getting too old for serious hiking, and no longer has a car that can manage Olympic roads, but he was happy to amble along and watch me trying to photograph butterflies on a beautiful day in the yellow-cedar zone in the mountains, a place he’d introduced me to in the first place. This is the same place where the Vidler’s Alpines taunted me mercilessly, and an Anise Swallowtail veered off into another dimension when it saw me waiting for it. Regina Johnson
Interdimensional Monarch. (M. Weiss)
Nice shot of Dogbane! What’s the yellow thing though? (M. Weiss)
Western Branded Skipper photo bombing a Callippe Frit. (C. Bellin)
Margined White masquerading as a glowing white thing. (R. Johnson)
California Tortoiseshell Irruption, June 28
A highlight of BBM was observing an irruption of California Tortoiseshells on Falls Creek Road in Okanogan County. We occasionally see California Tortoiseshells, but in one ravine we estimated hundreds, more likely thousands of individuals flying downslope towards the creek. Several clusters of adults, 10+ on piles of scat, and singletons were lined up side by side on fallen logs burned in a 2021 fire. Once heavily forested, shrubs and herbacious plants are recovering. Looking closer at its host plant, Snowbrush Ceanothus, we noticed adults clinging to their chrysalis. Some bushes were totally defoliated, many had 10-15 chrysalises, hanging like ornaments from the branches. Branches on bushes nearby and across the ravine were actually shaking from chrysalises wiggling, twirling about. Maybe a defense mechanism as we talked excitedly or an indication they were nearing eclosure. All in all an amazing encounter.
Cheryl Bellin and Jim Rauh
Great shot! But what is it? (what, you can’t tell it’s a Coronis Frit??)
On this BBM trip to the White Pass section of the PCT, we were apparently the only possible food source for millions of mosquitoes. And when all three of us gathered around a butterfly in a jar—hoo boy! The mosquitoes were in heaven then. We got to where we could not stop to look at the butterflies. Lori actually spritzed me continually with repellant while I was photographing a butterfly because there were dozens on me and they were not giving up. Regina Johnson
G’num2025Vol26No3
Regina Johnson
WBA Board Member, Editor of the G’num Newsleter & Moderator for WBA iNat Professional ecologist and horticulturalist