Hot day perfect for butterfly tally

Volunteers sight 57 species this year

Just as Monarch butterflies make an annual migration from Canada to Mexico, butterfly enthusiasts make a trip every year to document the range of butterflies in the Triangle.

About 15 keen-eyed butterfly enthusiasts fanned out early Sunday from the Museum of Life and Science in Durham for a day of counting butterflies at the Flat River, Falls Lake, Duke Forest and other natural areas in Durham and Orange counties.

Armed with binoculars and clipboards, they battled the heat and ticks for a chance to glimpse tiger swallowtails, Carolina satyrs and other little pieces of winged stained glass.

"There are so many good places to butterfly in this area," said Jeff Pippen, a research staffer at Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. Pippen has organized and led the annual count for seven years. "We vie every year for the most butterfly diversity in the Carolinas."

Data from butterfly counts, held across the country throughout the summer, are compiled by the North American Butterfly Association and used for conservation purposes such as tracking the health of species.

Butterflies, being cold-blooded, are sun worshippers, Pippen said. They like hot, bright days for basking on bushes or driveways. Days like Sunday.

August is a generally the best time in this area to see the most diversity of adult butterflies. Most adult butterflies live only a few weeks. (Monarchs are an exception, living nine months.)

The more the merrier

As the overcast morning cleared and the sun brightened, more and more butterflies fluttered about. Most adult butterflies get sustenance by drinking nectar from flowers. Curious names were being hurled through the air by the first person to spot a particular species -- Horace's duskywing, hoary edge, summer azure and red-spotted purple.

"Here's our first fiery skipper of the day," Pippen said, referring to a small yellowish butterfly with black dots under its wings. "This is the way it should be."

At Duke Forest, a pair of male common buckeyes swirled about each other like tiny airplanes dogfighting as they tried to establish their territory.

At one point, a tiny pale blue butterfly called an Eastern tailed-blue landed on Toni McFarland's hand.

McFarland got hooked on counting butterflies about seven years ago. Some may look drab at a distance, McFarland said, but then you get a better look.

"When you get up close and see them in sunlight, they are really beautiful," she said. "It's a fun hobby and pretty inexpensive, once you buy a pair of binoculars."

When the volunteers met again at the end of the day, they had identified about 57 different species, slightly higher than average, and about 3,000 individual butterflies.

The most unusual sighting

The most interesting sighting of the day was a white-M hairstreak, a small gray triangular butterfly with a zig-zag white line on the hind wing in the shape of a letter M.

"It was a real surprise," said Randy Emmitt, a handyman in Durham who has been photographing butterflies for about 10 years and has a butterfly garden in northern Durham County. "A lot of the butterflies can only be found for two or three weeks a year in specialized habitats."

The most common species people might spot in their yards or gardens are the tiger swallowtail, a large yellow butterfly with black stripes; the pearl crescent, a small butterfly that frequents gardens and has an intricate orange and black pattern on its wings; and the misnamed red-spotted purple, which actually has iridescent blue on its hind wings with orange spots underneath and frequently rests on driveways and sidewalks.