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Hunting for the striking Loki Juniper Hairstreaks in the mountains of the Santa Rosa Wilderness south of Palm Desert is always fun. About a mile down the Cactus Springs Trail off Hwy 74 is fairly steep canyon with Junipers on the slopes. Hitting these with rocks will sometimes scare up a roosting Loki; I then scramble up or down the slope to see if I can get close enough for a shot.
April 4, 2007
The Wandering Skipper has been relegated to the few remaining places along the coast where its host plant, Seashore Saltgrass, still grows. Upper Newport Ecological Preserve is one such undeveloped area, and several interesting skippers may sometimes be found there. Because it's relatively close to where I live, I made an effort this year to explore this bay in Newport Beach and several times I found these rare skippers.
April 10, 2007
A Gabb's Checkerspot along Barrett-Stoddard Road, a fire trail in the San Gabriel Mountains that is no longer used. I like the color of the butterfly against the almost black-and-white backdrop. Gabbii is an energetic, small butterfly that patrols open paths in the spring.
April 29, 2007
This Propertius Duskywing male is on a mustard plant along Barrett-Stoddard Road, the same day as the previous shot. This time the background provides the color.
April 29, 2007
Behr's Hairstreaks can be found north of the transverse ranges where the mountains meet the desert. This one is along Valyermo Road in the Antelope Valley near Bob's Gap. Fresh berhii can have an almost metallic shimmer to them.
May 13, 2007
This is not an Acmon Blue; it is a male Lupine Blue. This one was along the Angeles Crest Highway in the San Gabriels, the only place I've seen them. They can't be found in the Santa Monica Mountains (they say), and I've not seen one in scores of hikes in the San Bernardino Mountains. One reliable place in the San Gabriels to see them in the early summer is just off Hwy. 39 where the Rincon OHV road begins, just past the gate.
May 15, 2007
This is the elusive, much sought-after Indra Swallowtail. I had read that it existed in the San Gabriels but few had ever seen it there. I heard one lepidopterist say he hadn't seen one in thirty years of hiking the western part of the range. Then I met Bill Gendron, who'd had seen a number of these over years on the eastern side of the mountains. We agreed that a certain place - Sunset Peak - should be a good hilltop to check, and after two hikes yielded a single quick glimpse of Indra, I finally got this shot on the third hike up to the top. I didn't see another the rest of the season. It's an arduous uphill scramble to the peak, but on this day it was well worth it.
May 22, 2007
On the same day I saw the Indra in the previous photograph, I found a couple of Leanira Checkerspots along Glendora Ridge Road. This is another sought-after species that may not emerge every year, at least in numbers, but I saw about a dozen this year here and on one other hike.
May 22, 2007
Icehouse Canyon, which is not far from Mt Baldy, features a stand of Yerba santa that can be fantastic for butterflies in June. I went several times this year, and I picked this Mountain Mahogany Hairstreak photo as a favorite because of the subtle colors on the scales, best seen in the larger photograph.
June 19, 2007
This year was the first I travelled north to Mt Piños to explore in Ken Davenport country. Ken is a very active and generous lepidopterist who literally wrote the book on this area's butterflies. Though only about an hour's drive past my usual haunts, the butterflies I found were almost disorienting to me; the green Acmon (chlorina) and this Veined Blue were among the prize species I found along McGill Trail. It took a few trips up there (and some more studying of Ken's book) to get a handle on the area's fantastic leps.
July 2, 2007
This may be the most obscure butterfly on this site. Ironically, it was right there in plain site on the shoulder of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu past Pepperdine University. It is an unnamed subspecies of the Bernardino Blue that uses Eriogonum cinereum as its host plant. This male is indeed on cinereum. It is only briefly mentioned in the Systematics book in the species list but has not been formally described as far as I know. Some call it the Santa Monica Mountains Blue.
July 12, 2007
After driving out to see the undescribed Santa Monica Mountains Blue, I returned to Miramar Park in Torrance for a second look at one of its relatives, which I first visited three days before. This is the endangered El Segundo Blue, rediscovered where its host plant (Eriogonum parvifolium) had been planted for an eventual attempt at reintroduction. As it happens, it appeared on its own. This is a female (males are blue, females brown). I had no idea howI would ever get a photo of this one, since they were restricted basically behind barbed wire fences at LAX and inside the Chevron refinery in El Segundo. It felt wrong to be so close....
July 12, 2007
By midsummer I was totally immersed in the 'mormo' complex of butterflies, one of the real puzzles in this field still awaiting a solution. Here in Southern California we are ideally located when it comes to these species and subspecies, since there are perhaps a dozen-or-so of these distinctive populations within easy driving distance. This one is a light mormo cythera briefly mentioned in the Emmel and Emmel book from 1973; Chris Henne had found these decades ago on the north side of the San Gabriels just a couple of miles downhill from where I found this nice fresh one up near Mt Islip. It was in a patch of E. fasciculatum that I was checking along the road.
August 2, 2007
Another beautiful blue is the Melissa Blue, a not-uncommon butterfly that for whatever reason eluded me for years until I visited Lake Cuyamaca this summer. I've since been back and it was again easy to find at the same spot, which brings up a good point: if you know exactly where to look for a certain species, it can seem common. The orange up the forewings of the females make this one easy to recognize when you do see it.
August 25, 2007
I found this Western Tiger Swallowtail along lush Pine Valley Creek later in the day after taking the previous photo. I like everything about this photograph: good, constrasting background (but not distracting), fresh butterfly spreading its wings, and in focus with the proper exposure. All the stars aligned for this one.
August 25, 2007
I included this one to make a point: even the most common butterfly is sometimes worth another shot. This is a Fiery Skipper, so common that I probably had ten in my backyard when I took this photograph. But that just makes me pickier, since it should be relatively easy to get a great shot of a male and female both on the ventral and dorsal sides. This female was at Upper Newport Bay Ecological Preserve, and while the shot isn't perfect, it surpasses 99% of the shots I've taken in my own yard of this species thanks to the flowers and the angle of the wings.
August 30, 2007
Another common species, the Painted Lady. But I have had a really hard time getting a good shot of one that is fresh. They are renowned travellers, and more often than not they are at least a bit faded, if not downright raggedy. And when they are freshly emerged, they seem to be in a hurry. I found this one along Van Dusen Road near Big Bear Lake.
September 6, 2007
Still in mormo-complex mode, I headed up to Wildhorse Meadow hoping to find a truly striking metalmark, and I was not disappointed. When you are used to the common Behr's Metalmarks, the lack of orange on the dorsum on these is really something to see. In fact, to my eye they were almost like tiny Lorquin's Admirals from a distance. Compare the patterns and you may agree. These use Wright's Buckwheat and, incredibly, occupy the same place as another metalmark that is almost identical, used the same buckwheat, but emerges earlier in the year. What was once thought to be a double-brooded butterfly turned out to be two different species in the same place (sympatric) on the same plants but emerging at different times (allochronic). Truly amazing. This one is Apodemia mormo near mormo; the early summer flyer is Apodemia virgulti dialeucoides. I hope to get photographs of the latter in 2008.
September 11, 2007
This large, smudged blue ovipositing on Wright's Buckwheat is Dammer's Dotted Blue, the lower desert population. I found it south of Palm Springs in the Santa Rosa Wilderness though I wasn't looking for it at the time. I actually had made notes about where I might be able to hunt this one and other obscurities among its relatives in the Euphilotes complex and wasn't sure I could easily find it. Then there it was - a male and a female - and I didn't even now for sure what it was until I got home.
September 16, 2007
I took an incredible three-day road trip to Arizona in September, stopping first east of Phoenix at the Bryce Thompson Arboretum. I saw many butterflies within a few minutes of arriving, including this Palmer's Metalmark. It was a real rush to see so easily butterflies that in my area are so rare. Even before I got to the entrance I had several photos of sulphurs that I'd hoped to see. Once inside, I found the butterflies swarming the flowering shrubs by the hundreds.
September 25, 2007
On day two of my Arizona trip I hiked Mt Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson. Another epic day, and this Spring Azure is one of a couple dozen species I would see on the mountain that day.
September 26, 2007
On my final day in Arizona I drove down to fabled Sycamore Canyon in the Atascosa Mountains. Again, I was overwhelmed by the number of butterflies I would see, including this Bordered Patch. The bands on these are variable in thickness and color so I tried to get a variety of these (see the Nymphalidae page for a few). The species mix in this area (near the Mexican border) is a bit different and features some tropical species that blow up into these canyons with the summer monsoons.
September 27, 2007
Only a few people knew that the Field Crescent was in the San Gabriels Mountains, known from a single spot well up Highway 39. Unfortunately, this place was all but inaccessible due to a road closure several years ago after parts of the highway collapsed. This summer the gate closing the road was moved up a few miles, but this was still over three miles shy of the Field Crescent's location. I also noticed that while this butterfly was seen in May or June, which is when I planned to head up there in 2008, according to Garth and Tilden's book the lower-elevation populations could have a second brood in the autumn. Why not check it out? I decided to bring my bike and ride up the 3-plus miles to the spot, and after exploring a hairpin turn where they'd been seen, I thought they weren't here. But I headed up a little further and saw something move - there was a Field Crescent, then another, and soon enough I found five or six of these. Very satisfying, even after seeing scores of species in Arizona, because I really did a lot of detective work to find and photograph this species.
October 2, 2007