Early this spring, just when we seemed to be heading for the most severe drought in Oregon history, winter seemed to suddenly wake from its slumber and say "oh, wait a minute, I guess I'm not done yet." Clouds gathered, rain fell, and then snow. The parched ground soaked it up like a sponge. Everywhere I went it seemed people were saying, "I really miss that sunny weather, but we really need this rain." Nowhere was that more true than in Josephine County, which had been designated as an extreme drought area by those scientists who do that sort of thing. Due to this cold, rainy spell, I'd had to cancel two earlier planned visits to Josephine County and its riverine jewel, the Illinois, to search for the elusive Spring White ( Pontia sisymbrii ). This would be my 7th try over a 20-year span. I have seen the Spring White (well enough to identify it) only three times: in May 2003 in the Warner Mountains, in June of 2003 on Soda Mountain, and in May 2006 on the Illinois. I managed one somewhat blurry and out of focus photo out of those three sightings (see below). Whites are notoriously hard to photograph, unless you are lucky enough to find them puddling on wet sand or mud or nectaring on a cool morning. Which is why I was targeting this river's edge habitat in early spring, when there is more puddling habitat around. Oh, and it's called the Spring White. As the rainy days of April crawled along like chilled salamanders, I kept watching the weather forecasts for southern Oregon. I was hoping, longing, to see some of those happy little sun icons. Nope. Just depressing little rain cloud icons strung across every day of the week. Then, about ten days ago, I saw that there might be a window of sun down in the Illinois Valley over the following weekend, and I started to press my foot on the hope pedal. I knew it would be iffy to set out a-hunting for butterflies after all that cold and rain, but I just could't contain my desire to start my butterfly season another week! I packed up my "lep trek"gear in my typical not-really-quite-ready, first-trip-of-the-year kind of way and jumped on I-5 heading south, early on Saturday morning. I had estimated my arrival in the Illinois Valley at about 11 am, and that turned out to be pretty good timing, given that it was sunny, but still quite cool when I arrived. I started out walking on the Jeffrey Pine loop trail, near the beginning of Eight Dollar Road, where I soon encountered several Sara's Orangetips (after the taxonomic split, these are only found in Oregon along the border with California), a few tattered California Tortoiseshells and numerous Propertius Duskywings. It was pretty clear that cool weather-tolerant species would win this day. After about 30 minutes of walking, I saw a white flying about 50 feet in front of me. My first instinct was to reach for my butterfly net. However, in my first-trip-of-the-year packing frenzy, I had forgotten to pack my net (yeah, I know, I know). So, I would be at the mercy of this bug. Will it stop and nectar? Will it stop to sip some mineral water at a sand bar? Will it come land on my outstretched hand? To my chagrin, it didn't see or smell anything it considered vaguely attractive about (or anywhere near) me, and it flew on down the hill as if I didn't exist, standing there staring at it, churning with desire to know what species it was. "Why isn't that damn net in the car?" I said (carefully phrasing the comment to avoid any responsibility). I was headed for some sandy spots along the riverbank there, and hoped to get lucky with a Spring White or even two, happily sipping moisture from the riverside sand. As I traipsed along the river's edge, I spied two more of these whites, whatever they were. The second one stopped for about a millisecond to nectar on a white native mustard. Miraculously, I got one poor photo, but it was just clear enough to tell that this was a spring form of the Margined White, lovely with its bold black ventral vein bars, but, alas, not the object of my search. As I walked, I stopped to scan mustard family wildflowers wherever I saw them, as they are often visited by whites, orangetips and marbles. They are both preferred nectar sources, as well as larval host plants. In this area, I knew that I might see Sara's Orangetip, California Marble, Large Marble, Gray Marble, Spring White, Margined White or Western White. So when I began to see patches of Waldo rockcress, a purple mustard-family native flower in bloom, I let my hopes grow a bit. As it turned out, over the course of my two days along the Illinois, I would not see any whites at Waldo rockcress. Go figure. After a lovely walk around the Jeffrey Pine Loop, I headed back to my car for some lunch, and then headed east. I made a quick stop at what I call Butterfly Gulch, where two small unnamed streams flow down to and under Rd 4103. There I found several Sara's Orangetips, one California Marble, one Greenish Blue, one Gray Marble, a few Mylitta Crescents and a number of Common Checkered Skippers. No Spring White joy here either, but a nice variety of other early season species. My next site visit would be Sixmile Creek, a beautiful stretch of the Illinois with a dramatic rocky shore with many pools and seeps in the spring. Within a minute of exiting my car, I saw my first Pale Swallowtail of the trip, a couple of California Tortoiseshells and some Echo Azure blues on the sand below. A promising start. Gear on! As I made my way down the rocky access to the rock bed along the river, I noticed a stirring of a number of blues on a shaded rock, so I headed down there. I found a puddle club of many Echo Azures packed in cheek-to-jowl (just go with me here, I can't imagine jowls on a butterfly either) in a moist mossy spot that was partly shaded. I slowly moved in for a closer look, curious to see if there were any interlopers in the group. I counted them and got roughly 100, and at first I thought they were all Azures. I scanned them one more time... "gotcha!" One Western Tailed Blue was there, blending in nicely with its cousins, but slightly smaller, slightly more gray underneath, with its orange hindwing spot and tiny tail. Crawling all over and around the rocks at Sixmile Creek, I found several Mylitta Crescents, a few Common Ringlets (the really pale southern Oregon form), one Common Checkered Skipper, several Propertius Duskywings and a California Marble. I was satisfied that I had covered the site well, and I saw none of the larger white species so at least there was no question of whether a saw a Spring White. It was almost 5 pm by that point, and so I called it a day and headed to my Air BnB on the Rogue River for dinner and a night's rest. Next morning it was up early, a quick bird walk along the Rogue, and then a return drive down to the Illinois Valley. I started the day by walking down Road 011 off the Illinois River Road, which heads down to Star Flat and the Star Flat Fen (a bog with the strangely lovely Darlingtonia pitcher plant). The road continues past the fen, along Deer Creek until it reaches its confluence with the Illinois. There it meets the Kerby Flat Trail, which I had never walked. I decided to walk that all the way to Kerby Flat to maximize my time in the river corridor, and hopefully increase my odds of encountering a Spring White. I didn't know if it was a good plan, but it was a plan. It was a thoroughly enjoyable walk. From all the recent rain, there were puddles and seeps everywhere. In fact, there were so many wet spots, that I surmised that the relatively few butterflies must be spread out. In contrast, a good seep in summertime, when water is more scarce, will often attract a high density and diversity of butterflies to a small area by its relative rarity. It was cool again on this morning, and there were many more birds in evidence than butterflies. On the way down, I met a group of Forest Ecology students from Linfield College who had been down to see the Darlingtonia Fen. They were excited to be in the great classroom of the outdoors. They said they were studying for their finals by practicing their field skills, in the field . I commended them on their choice of places to study, and gave them my ButterfliesofOregon.com pitch. They seemed enthusiastic about visiting. I also met several Propertius Duskywings, a Persius Duskywing, a couple Mylitta Crescents, some California Tortoiseshells, a few Sara's Orangetips, and a couple Anise Swallowtails. They were a bit light on conversation, but I enjoyed their company. When I arrived at the confluence of Deer Creek with the Illinois I was greeted by a large sandbar which looked like fabulous puddling habitat, along its moist edge at the river. In one sheltered spot there, I found the only Indra Swallowtail of the weekend, with a couple of Anise Swallowtails, always a lovely sight. Just above that sand bar, I found the Kerby Flat trail and headed west on the rocky path. There were many patches of Waldo rockcress, a few Echo Azures, several more Sara's Orangetips, and more Anise Swallowtails. Eventually, I passed through a shady woodland and emerged into sunny Kerby Flat, the most obvious feature of which was the presence of several big, bright patches of Rosy plectritis (Plectritis congesta). Each flower has a lovely pink ball of color at the end of a green stem. Within a few minutes I saw several whites, actually nectaring (!) on the plectritis blooms. Now we're talking (I said silently)! I slowly crept closer to each one to get a good view through my binos, and identified one Margined White after another--five in all. Lovely, and distinct in their spring form, but decidedly not Spring Whites. I was starting to feel pangs of hunger, so I about-faced, and began the 3 mile walk back to the car. Again a pleasant walk, but again with relatively few butterflies. Back at my car after eating lunch, I began to strategize about where to go next. Back to Sixmile? Try Jeffrey Pine again? Or to the area around Eight Dollar Bridge? The bridge area felt right to me. I knew there was good puddling habitat there so I drove back out Illinois River Road to Highway 199 and down to Eight Dollar Road. I had scouted the area the day before, so I knew the key spots to check. In the primo sandy puddling spot, I found a bright, fresh group of swallowtails all packed in tightly. They literally kept pushing into one another as though they couldn't get close enough. They reminded me of little boys snuggling up to their Dad. On that same beach I also found a couple of Persius Duskywings, a male and female, like smaller versions of the Propertius Duskywing, with slightly less bold markings. These little duskwings, whose larva feed on legumes, weren't on the wet sand, but on wet gravel and wet charcoal. Those sightings rounded out the excitement for this spot so I headed back to the car, and decided to go back yet again to the Illinois River Road, and check a couple spots there. When I arrived at "Butterfly Gulch," I found it so empty of butterflies that I was a bit shocked. I had never seen it that way before. The previous day, it had a lot more action. So that ended up being a very quick stop. It was getting late in the day, and I wanted to stop at a roadside seep near Snailback Creek, which I knew from previous visits could be a good late afternoon spot. It was a fun, though white-free stop, but I did pick up a few new species there, including Silvery Blue, Northern checkerspot and Brown Elfin. By this point, it was feeling like I would be counting this as a warm-up trip and as a scouting trip, and that I would be making the drive down to the Illinois Valley again soon, to continue my search for the Spring White. Hopefully in a week or two, there were be more signs of Spring, and perhaps a white or two to bring the joy! Stay tuned for an upcoming blog on my planned first search for the newly described Asher Blue, which was identified as a new species last year, and formally described this past winter by Caitlin Labar, Jon Pelham, and Norbert Kondla. This new blue is closely related to the Echo Azure. The story of the Asher Blue and its namesake is really lovely, so please come back for that one! Below is the complete species list (21 species) from my two days on the Illinois, with counts for each.

I was packing for a trip to the southern Blue Mountains to (hopefully) photograph Garita Skipperlings for the first time, when I got the email. My friend Stefan Schlick had been leading a birding tour in Wallowa County, and had seen, netted, and photographed a fresh Gillett's Checkerspot ( Euphydryas gillettii ) on Hat Point Road on June 26. He had posted the photo on iNaturalist.org, and sent me a link. I was astounded! As far as I knew, no one had reported Gillett's Checkerspots in Oregon since Andy Warren and Vern Covlin last found them in June and July 2004. In June of 2004, I also ventured out to look for the Gillett's Checkerspot, based on a conversation the previous fall with Harold Rice, the long-time Oregon lepidopterist who had discovered the Oregon population in 2003. My visit came about two weeks before Vern Covlin found them well below Summit Ridge. More than likely, my visit had been too early that year. In recent years, I had been wondering whether Oregon's outlier population of this northern Rocky Mountain species was still hanging on. Stefan had just answered that question! I immediately began strategizing to add a visit to Hat Point Road to my Blue Mountains trip. The confirmation that Gillett's Checkerspot had been seen just a few days before was plenty of motivation to rearrange my schedule to make the long trip extension possible. After two days enjoying the warm glow of success with Gartia Skipperling in Bear Valley, I headed north on Highway 395, aimed for Wallowa County. The trip from Bear Valley to Stefan's gillettii spot was about 6 hours, so I broke up the drive by camping along Bear Creek in the western Wallowa Mountains. I breakfasted on blueberry pancakes and broke camp early the next morning, hoping to reach the lower part of Hat Point Road by 8:30 am. I wanted to take advantage of the cool morning air and the more sluggish butterfly movement that often occurs when the sun is low. The weather seemed perfect, and my hopes were high. Driving in the early morning was a breeze--traffic was almost non-existent, and the golden light on the Wallowa Mountains was inspiring. I reached the town of Imnaha at about 8:30 am, dropped by the Imnaha Store and Tavern to pick up some ice for my coolers, and began the slow climb up Hat Point Road. It had been 17 years since I drove this road, and rather than memories of that last trip, I recalled my first time up that road as a 9-year-old. My childhood memories of those rocky, winding first 5 miles of the road are vivid and visceral. I was in the back seat of our low-slung 1964 Buick Special with my brother and sister, and I was on the passenger side. From that vantage point I felt way too close to the steep drop-off down the ridge slope from the edge of the rough, narrow road. To me, it looked like a vertical cliff dropping into a bottomless chasm, and I had to look away. It felt to me that we were in immediate danger of falling off that cliff. Those first 5 miles seemed to take a nerve-wracking, nail-biting eternity. Miraculously, it seemed to me, we made it through unharmed. This time around, the road seemed mild and manageable in my trusty Subaru Forester. When I arrived at the first viewpoint at Milepost 5, I got out to stretch my legs and get my bearings. Within a few minutes, a Forest Service rig pulled into the parking area, and two women climbed out, Immediately they opened the hood and began looking under the front of the truck. I could see that some kind of fluid was leaking heavily from the engine compartment. I said "hello" and asked if they were having trouble. An admitted beginner in auto mechanics, I knew that a ride was about all the help I could offer. It turned out the radiator was surcharging water from overheating during that steep 5 mile climb. We chatted while they waited for the engine to cool, and I soon discovered that they were biologists, one a botanist and the other an ornithologist. When they inquired about what brought me up Hat Point Road, I said I had come in search of a scarce butterfly that is found no where else in Oregon. Being curious naturalists, they wanted to know what it was called. When I said "Gillett's Checkerspot" they both looked at each other with an OMG! kind of expression. For a quick second, I thought that they had seen it, and were going to fill me in on the exciting details. Instead, the younger woman laughed and pointed to her name tag, where I saw that her last name was Gillett! It was even spelled the same. She was thrilled to know that a butterfly carried her family name and that it was found here, in her forest! We wondered aloud whether the Gillett whose name was given to this butterfly was related to her. When I showed her my website on my phone with a photo of Gillett's Checkerspot, she took a photo of my phone screen and texted it to her family. I loved that moment of techno-connection. I waited until they felt confident that their truck was going to get them home, just in case I need to ferry them down the mountain. They assured me they would be fine, and, amazingly, the cell reception up there was outstanding, so they had backup from town if they needed it. I was ready to head up the road before their truck was cooled enough to head up again, so we said "see you up the hill" rather than "good-bye" since this was the only road up and we were both headed the same direction. In the next few miles there were many flowery meadows along the road, dominated by large patches of Horsemint ( Agastache urticifolia ) and punctuated by splashes of golden-yellow native sunflowers. These meadows attracted many Pale Swallowtails ( Papilio eurymedon ), Western Tiger Swallowtails ( Papilio rutulus ) and smaller numbers of Two-tailed Swallowtails ( Papilio multicaudata ), along with many Mountain Parnassians ( Parnassius smintheus ) and Callippe Fritillaries ( Speyeria callippe semivirda ), and a handful of Hydaspe ( Speyeria hydaspe ) and Zerene (Speyeria zerene picta) Fritillaries. The butterflies were so focused on those Horsemint blossoms that they hardly noticed me snuggling in with my camera. Eventually I made my way up to the forested area where Stefan had found his gillettii . It was an odd place to search for a butterfly, with forest on both sides of the road, and few flowers or butterflies. That checkerspot must have been on the move, but going where? After searching enough there to be satisfied that his gillettii was not still hanging around, I headed up toward the Granny View area, where Vern Covlin had found one of his gillettii back in 2004. This area looked very promising, featuring small forest patches with a lush understory (possible host plant habitat), interspersed with wet and dry meadows, a spring, and lots of sun. It was a large and diverse area to search, and I settled in for an in-depth exploration. At the Granny View wayside, I saw my new biologist friends again. I was glad to hear that their truck was fine once the engine cooled. Linda, the botanist, and I discussed the larval host plants for gillettii --members of the genus Lonicera , or honeysuckles. The suspected species in this area were Black Twinberry ( Lonicera involucrata) and Snowberry ( Symphoricarpos albus) . She had seen a twinberry in the area, but she couldn't recall which species or exactly where, but clearly snowberry was widespread in the area, as evidenced by a large thicket of it right in front of us. She suggested I take the loop trail to the viewpoint that winds through some very nice meadows just below us, and I vowed to do so. The meadows were dotted with large patches of Parsnip-flowered Buckwheat ( Eriogonum heracleoides ) and smaller clumps of Sulfur Buckwheat ( Eriogonum umbellatum ) and attracted many Cascadia Blues ( Euphilotes heracleoides ), Lupine Blues ( Icaricia lupini ), Callippe Fritillaries ( Speyeria callippe ) and several Western Green Hairstreaks ( Callophrys affinis ). Let me highlight here that the Cascadia Blue has now been formally described by Kohler and Warren, and I'm glad to welcome this lovely blue to Butterflies of Oregon website species pages . All the frenetic butterfly action kept me busy, counting, identifying and photographing, but perhaps distracting me from my intended search for the elusive Gillett's Checkerspot. I saw a moderate number of Snowberry Checkerspots ( Euphydryas colon ), a few Northern Checkerspots ( Chlosyne palla ) and one Edith's Checkerspot ( Euphydryas editha ), but so far no Gillett's. By the end of day one, I was spent, both from the heat and from the effort to keep up with, identify and photograph all those butterflies! Thirty-two species was the day one count, and I had likely missed a few due to the sheer numbers of individuals. I got quality photos of 12 species that day. On day two, I decided to start at Granny Spring, because the habitat was so diverse there, and because I knew there had been a past sighting there. From there, the plan was to head up to Summit Ridge, north of the Hat Point observation tower. I spent about 90 minutes in the meadows around Granny View, and found 18 species. Still no gillettii to be seen. Where were those lovely creatures hiding? One of my theories (based on thin air and wild-ass-guessing) was that there is a source population of Gillett's Checkerspots somewhere higher up, like Summit Ridge, and that Stefan's individual and those recorded by Vern Covlin were wandering down the mountain from that source population. In the absence of any actual data, or anyone to disagree, I convinced myself that it sounded pretty solid. If nothing else, it gave me a glimmer of hope and a sliver of determination after a day and a half of not finding a single gillettii . I decided to go directly up to the canyon rim and search there next. The section of the road beyond Hat Point Lookout up past Warnock Corral and up to the ridge was much rougher than anything so far, but not as bad as the warning sign implied, and not nearly as bad as it was back in 2004. The sign called it a 4x4 track, not maintained for passenger vehicles, proceed at your own risk, your car will be forever ruined, etc., etc. Ironically the warning sign followed a much worse section of road than it preceded. And back in 2004, there were small trees down all across the road above Warnock Corral, and the only way to proceed to the rim was to drive right over them. Don't even talk to me about washboard--it was like putting my car in a paint mixer. By comparison, the conditions on this day felt like a walk in the park. The weather was still cooperating quite nicely, and I arrived at the southernmost part of the ridge with a grumbling belly calling loudly for food. After fueling my body and resting a bit, I decided to walk a trail that followed the rim of the canyon and poke around in all the nooks and crannies along the meadows just at the rim. If this bug was hiding in little hidden glades off the main trail, I was going to find them! The butterfly activity in these rim meadows was much lower than in the more lush meadows lower down, and after a couple of hours of searching, I had only one new species, a lone Half-moon Hairstreak. The dimmer switch on my glimmer of hope was in a downward trend. I recalled the text I'd received a couple days before from fellow butterflier Greg Sigrist, who had guided me to find my first Oregon Swallowtail. He had come up to Hat Point Road a few days ahead of me to find Gillett's Checkerspot, and in a long day of searching, he hadn't found it. As I circled through the opposite edges of the rim-top meadows towards to the car, I considered the time of day, now 3 pm, and the drive to my evening destination of The Dalles. The drive would take over 6 hours, and I didn't want to drive through the Gorge in the dark. With no small amount of reluctance, I called off the search at about 2:30 pm. As I packed my gear back in the car, I kept glancing north toward the further reaches of the canyon rim where I hadn't searched... I had so many questions. Was there a continuing source population of Gillett's Checkerspot up on Summit Ridge? Had I not looked far enough north? Was early July too late to find them? How many were there during their peak flight period? Had they been there this day, right beneath my nose, but in such small numbers that I just missed them? If Stefan's individual was so fresh, why weren't there others still flying 7 days later? And if they were still flying, where had they gone? Did Stefan know how lucky he'd been? ( Ed. note: he does now. ) Mystery after mystery. There was no getting around it--if I was going to find and photograph Gillett's Checkerspot, I was going to have to aim my search right into the middle of all these unknowns. I decided to call this trip a scouting trip, always a good approach when other ways of thinking are more discouraging. Through this trip I got familiar again with the territory and the route to it. I learned that the high species diversity could be a distraction from the more focused goal of finding Gillett's Checkerspot, and that, in order to find it, I might have to actually focus in more closely on this one butterfly. Which of course would be contrary to all my learning about the boons and benefits of "looking" versus "looking for." Most importantly, I learned that there is a lot that I didn't know about this butterfly and this population on the far edge of its range. With both birds and butterflies, I have a strategic approach that I call "getting in my reps." It's a reference more commonly applied to practicing a new sport or art or other skill, in which you just have to get in repetitions of practice in order to develop. Without the repetitions, you don't learn the skill. With bird and butterfly searches, "getting in reps" translates to getting in a critical mass of days in the field in the area where the critter lives, and based on the best available information, doing that within the typical flight period. The more reps I get in at the right time in the right place, the higher the odds that I will be in a place when the target species is also there. As you might imagine, this strategy has a research component, in which I continue to research the species and learn as much as I can about when and where it is likely to occur--right up until the day I leave. All of which is to say, I'll be back on Hat Point Road again next summer. It will probably be an earlier and longer visit, and hopefully I will be armed with more site details from past sightings. And it may involve working with a team. Maybe we'll start a new NABA 4th of July Butterly Count up there. To me, this one of our most beautiful butterflies--it just doesn't feel right that we seem to have lost track of it. As Stefan Schlick commented after his gillettii sighting "this looks like a great area for butterflies!" He got that right. I saw a total of 32 species the first day (from Milepost 5 up to Granny View), and 33 species the second day (from Granny View up to the south end of Summit Ridge), for a grand total of 39 species over two days. The numbers of each species below are decidedly under-representative of the actual numbers. Had I taken time to actually count them all, I would not have made it more than a couple miles up the road! Think of these numbers as indicators of the relative abundance of each species. *Gillett's Checkerspot photo by Dana Ross, from the Oregon State Arthropod Collection

The Taoist Masters of old speak of the principle of Wu wei, or non-doing, as being central to their way of understanding how the world is and how it works. As my western mind interprets this principle, it has to do in part with an approach of yielding to and following the natural unfolding of things in their own time. The Taoist masters invite us to "be like water, which is ‘submissive and weak’ and ‘yet which can’t be surpassed for attacking what is hard and strong’." This seems to go counter to the western concept of always pressing forward, working hard to accomplish things of value and thereby making oneself valuable. Perhaps the American stand-up comic known as "Larry the Cable Guy" summed this philosophy up best with his signature phrase: "git 'er done!" Chasing rare or scarce butterflies has been teaching me to be a bit less of a git-'er-done kind of guy, and more of a let-it-unfold-in-its-own-time kind of guy. The Taoist Masters of old learned that they could achieve better results with less effort and stress by acting in accord with the processes and cycles of nature. It makes perfect sense, then, if one's goal has to do directly with finding a critter in nature with its own process and cycle, that non-doing might be a suitable frame of mind for approaching that goal. Obviously, I can neither cause a butterfly to show up in a given place and time through force of will nor move the flight period of that butterfly to more conveniently fit my schedule. Yet, I have often let a western cultural habit of "pushing the river," or being driven by a motivation towards more success now , to affect my planning for butterfly searches. I have seen this manifest as planning a trip to find several species with slightly different but overlapping flight periods, and counting on finding them all even though the goal of finding them all is motivating me to aim for the fringes of the flight periods for some of them, increasing my odds of missing them (which has occurred often). Note to self: the I-want-it-all-now approach has not been particularly successful. All of this musing led me to employ a calmer, simpler approach to this year's search for Garita Skipperling ( Oarisma garita ), a small, but kind of classy-looking grass skipper that flies in late June and early July. The diminutive ending "ling" on the end of "skipper" is our clue that they are small, even for a skipper. The Garita is widespread and locally common throughout the Rocky Mountain states, and is found in wild grassy mountain habitats as well as disturbed and weedy ones. A butterflier from central Montana might bust a gut if I told her I had repeatedly driven several hours across Oregon trying to find even a single garita . But it would be true. I have tried repeatedly to photograph this little skipper, ever since I saw one in the lawn of a seemingly abandoned motel in Minam, Oregon in 2004 . In recent years, Oregon lepidopterists have documented that garita has spread further into Oregon from its former range to the east of us. Dana Ross and Dennis Deck both found it several years ago in wet meadows around Bear Valley, in the southern Blue Mountains near the town of Seneca. Last year I scouted this area, and after finding no garita , concluded that I had arrived before garita began flying. This year, I planned a trip to find just this one species, and to drop right into the middle of its flight season, in those wet meadows around Bear Valley. The combination of being both more relaxed and having a simpler goal yielded a plan of spending 2-3 days searching for this one species, and a feeling that it would be fine if I didn't find it. Dutifully following the navigational guidance of Captain Google, I approached Bear Valley from the south. As I turned north onto Highway 395 from Highway 20 just east of Burns, I had my eye on a large thunderhead to the northeast. I was hoping it was not heading towards Bear Valley, as it looked dark enough to dump a good bit of rain on me and the butterflies. As I was driving north, it seemed more and more like that thunderhead was heading for Bear Valley. I then decided perhaps I could outrun it in order to get some time in the meadows before the storm hit, so I notched up my speed on the cruise control. However, the storm seemed to guess my strategy, and as I sped up, it seemed to do the same. We arrived within minutes of each other. So, it was with the sound of thunder rolling over the hills and meadows that I began my search in some meadows along Forest Service Road 3925, north of Seneca. As I stepped into the drier fringe of the meadow, winding my way through the shrubby cinquefoil, I began to see Northern Crescents ( Phyciodes cocyta ), both males and females. As I moved out into a slightly more moist zone, I saw the speeding blurs of Field Crescents ( Phyciodes pulchella ). And soon, a small orange-ish skipper, too fast for me to ID in flight. Though the thunder head was now beginning to shade the meadow, the butterflies were still fairly active. I watched the skipper zig-zag rapidly just above the grasses and wildflowers until it landed. Ah, Sonora Skipper ( Polites sonora ). That's good, because they often like the same habitat as Garita Skipperlings. Within a few minutes, I spotted a Garita Skipperling. It's slower, slightly more relaxed flight pattern, together with the silver flashing of its wing edges and torso made it possible to distinguish it in flight from the Sonora. Very helpful. At this point, the thunderhead was fully overhead, and the light grew quite a bit dimmer. What I had earlier seen as bad news (dark skies, no direct sunlight and possible rain) now worked in my favor. As the sunlight faded to gray, the butterflies slowed down, and they began to bask to warm up their flight muscles, and the skipperlings were no exception! With the booming of thunder in my ears and a dark cloud hung directly over me, I got my first clear photo of a Garita Skipperling, basking on a blade of grass. That wasn't so hard. Being in the right place at the right time, and leaving behind the desire to hurry in order to get on to the next species, made it all feel so easy. There were other species basking in the cool shadow of the thunderhead, such as Western White, Greenish Blue, and in the drier sections of the meadow, Edith's Copper. As I zig-zagged in a general northerly movement through the meadow I saw a wetter section of the meadow with sedges and cattails at the northeast end, so I headed over that way. I saw a several Western Whites ( Pontia occidentalis ) and a few more Garitas as I walked, but none perched long enough for a photo. Even with the clouds, they were still quite sensitive to my approach. As I got close to the wet swale at the north end, I caught a glimpse of a grass skipper down in the vegetation, and it looked distinctly larger and lighter than the Sonoras and Garitas, even from a distance. I walked very slowly to where I had seen it flutter, and peered down among the sedges, grasses and cinquefoil. Now this is a surprise--its a Peck's Skipper! I hadn't expected to see that in southern Grant County, but here it is. What a nice surprise. The dark heart of the thunderhead was now overhead, and it was sprinkling lightly while thunder rumbled around. All of which made that Peck's Skipper want to just stay parked where it was, posing patiently while I immortalized it in digital imagery. In this un-named meadow (which I dubbed "Sugarloaf Meadow" after a nearby butte), I found 14 species under those ominous skies, and got a nice dorsal photo of Garita Skipper. I call that a good day's work! I had planned on camping that night and visiting another meadow about 12 miles to the south the following day, so I packed up and headed down Izee-Paulina Lane. The forecast was for clear skies in the morning and I was excited for that. I wanted to get out in the meadow by 8 am, to find the butterflies basking in the cool morning air, soaking up the sunlight. I made an early night of it, and after a tasty oatmeal breakfast and a morning bird walk, I headed down the hill to the meadow. The light was lovely, and I imagined what I could do with that light and a cooperative Garita... As I spiraled through the meadow, many butterflies were waking up and I saw my first Garita at about 9 am, unfortunately not the cooperative type. Greenish Blues ( Icaricia saepiolus ) and Sonora Skippers were abundant, and Field Crescents and Northern Crescents also made a good showing. It was already getting quite warm and the butterflies were getting more active. The Garitas I saw wouldn't let me get closer than about 10 feet before flying. These conditions I can deal--I've got strategies. I opened up my tactical "toolbox" and pulled out a strategy that had recently worked well for both Gray Marbles and Mountain Parnassians--the Stakeout. I watched the meadow to see which plant species the Garitas went to most often, and then picked one of those plants that had been visited several times over a span of a few minutes. I sat down a few feet from a small golden-yellow groundsel flower, and plucked a couple blades of grass so I had a clear shot of the flowers. Then I waited for them to come to me . After about 5 minutes I wondered if I had picked the wrong flower, but I decided they just needed more time to get used to me being there. That was the right conclusion. A few minutes later, a couple Garitas made very quick visits to "my" flower. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I held my camera at the ready. And sure enough, a few minutes later a bright fresh Garita came to my flower for nectar and hung around long enough for me to get a series of shots. Bingo! I checked the images on my camera, and zoomed all the way in--they looked good: well-focused, well-lit, with plenty of depth-of-field. Mission accomplished! I had a couple more hours before I needed to move on, so I just played in the meadow after that. Several very fresh Great Spangled Fritillaries ( Speyeria cybele leto ) showed up and perched on the shrubby cinquefoil at the upper end of the meadow. A few minutes later, a lovely Hydaspe Fritillary ( Speyeria hydaspe ) came in for nectar at the same groundsel species that had drawn my prized Garita. A couple of Small Woodnymphs ( Cercyonis oetus ) darted around, and I spotted several Mormon Fritillaries ( Speyeria mormonia ), and a couple of Common Ringlets ( Coenonympha tullia ) as I walked. This "mission" had felt so relaxed and so pleasant, compared to many other trips. I concluded that my mental framework was a big factor in that, along with the fine weather, and finally being aligned with the timing of my quarry. I found I was liking this "non-doing" influence on my butterflying. I might just want to not-do more of that. By my count, there are 165 species-level taxa of butterflies documented to regularly breed in Oregon, including three as yet undescribed blue species and 162 officially described species. The Garita Skipperling was the 160th of those 165 that I'd photographed in Oregon, leaving just 5 to go. I know that four of those remaining five might be really challenging to find, let alone photograph. Compton's Tortoiseshell ( Nymphalis l-album ) and American Copper ( Lycaena phlaeas ) haven't been recorded in Oregon in many years, and no one seems certain whether they still breed in Oregon. The Checkered White ( Pontia protodice ) is challenging because it looks so similar to Western White, and because there is no reliable site or group of sites for it--its hit and miss out in the Great Basin. It also may not breed in Oregon every year. And the Gillett's Checkerspot ( Euphydryas gillettii ) hadn't been recorded in Oregon for 17 years, until a single individual was found earlier this summer. Stay tuned for my next post as I go after Gillett's Checkerspot. The fifth species, Spring White ( Pontia sisymbrii ) might be a bit easier to find. I just need to get the timing right and some good weather in early April down in Josephine County next spring. I've been at this for 17 years, so there's no hurry. All in good time, and all in their time--the timing of the butterflies themselves. I found 21 species over two days in the Bear Valley area, but those Garita Skipperling photos -17 years after that abandoned motel affair - were a special treat. Perhaps most of all, however, I enjoyed the ease and flow of this trip. I could get used to that.

Isn't it curious how sometimes when we are looking for one thing, we can sometimes find something else that is equally (or more) satisfying? If you've been reading my blog for a while, you've seen me write about this theme before. A key, I find, is "looking," as opposed to "looking for." When we are looking for something very specific, we naturally tend to filter out other things that aren't that one thing , and we can miss a lot. This is why, when I go after one of my target butterflies, I use the target species to choose the destination and the date, but when I get there, I try to look at whatever is there, and to keep my vision broad. It seems when I do this, there are often welcome surprises. Last year about this time, I went to Jackson County for the umpteenth time hoping to find the elusive Goldhunter's Hairstreak ( Satyrium auretorum ), and much to my surprise and delight, I actually found one and photographed it at Kinney Creek! I'd been looking for it for years, and over those years my annual trip to Jackson County to find it had become a spring ritual. This year, now motivated by my curiosity about the on-going status of the Goldhunter's population at Kinney Creek, I kept the ritual alive, and planned a two-day trip to go down and take a look. My friend and fellow butterfly photographer extraordinaire Rob Santry joined me for the first day. It was a lovely, warm and sunny morning and we started walking up the gravel road at about 10 am. One of the first surprises of the day for both Rob and I was seeing Sara's Orangetip ( Anthocharis sara ) males stopping for nectar several times. They were full-on posing for us, repeatedly nectaring on Western Verbena ( Verbena lasiostachys ), a southwest Oregon native, along the side of the road. If you've ever tried to get dorsal photos of this species (or its close "cousin" Julia's Orangetip), you understand why we were surprised. This does not happen often--in 25+ years of watching butterflies, I'd never seen this species nectaring so frequently before. It suddenly occurred to me after seeing this happen a couple of times that I actually didn't have any good dorsal photos of Sara's Orangetip, and that a golden opportunity was being laid in my lap! My photo above attests to my being able to make use of the opportunity. Another butterfly species that is a southwest Oregon specialty in late May is the Columbian Skipper ( Hesperia columbia ), a small, golden-orange grass skipper. These are small, fast flyers and usually only linger briefly on flowers in the morning. On this morning they were also going to the Western Verbena for nectar. I'd gotten some nice ventral shots last year at Kinney Creek, but hadn't had as much luck with dorsal, spread-wing displays. There was one particularly thick and floriferous patch of verbena that had a couple Columbian Skippers hanging around it, so we paused and watched them. They were only stopping for a few seconds each time, and then zipping away to another flower. Initially, I got a "brilliant" a series of photos of the verbena with no skipper in sight before I was finally quick enough to catch one before it flew. The one in the photo above is a very fresh male--note the long, narrow dark stigmata patch (which only the male has) on the inner wing. Sweet--another photo addition for the website, making it a productive morning already! As we continued up the road, we noticed the half-eaten carcass of a California Mountain Kingsnake ( Lampropeltis zonata ). The intact tail end of the snake still sported the bold red, black and white bands of this beautiful snake species. Rob surmised that it had been killed by a Red-tailed Hawk that we flushed when we came around the bend. A fresh Callippe Fritillary ( Speyeria callippe elaine ) was hanging around the carcass, and eventually landed on it. I'd seen butterflies on dead snakes before in South America, but this was the first time I'd seen this in Oregon. Like feces and urine, decaying and dead animals represent a source of minerals that butterflies can imbibe through their proboscis. The accumulated minerals are an important component of what the male passes to the female when they mate, providing nutrients that support the survival of offspring. After Rob left to attend to social commitments, I continued walking the road into the afternoon, and also came back again the next morning. In the afternoon, I encountered a butterfly that was new for me at this site, but likely one that's been there all along, and I just never saw it: the Common Roadside Skipper. It is so small, so dark and so fast that it is very easy to miss. This one just happened to land where I happened to be looking, otherwise I likely would have missed this one also. When I saw the Common Roadside Skipper (not surprisingly, on the side of the road), I was heading up to a spot that I knew was often a good butterfly draw. Its the spot where I found the Goldhunter's Hairstreak the previous year: a patch of blooming Pacific Ninebark ( Physocarpus capitatus ). Ninebark is a native shrub with many domes of small white flowers, and under some conditions, it attracts a lot of butterflies, especially in arid environs. I was hoping to get lucky twice and see the Goldhunter's Hairstreak there again. The trick in finding hairstreaks is often to find a habitat feature that attracts them, such as an area of mud or wet sand, or a particularly attractive source of flower nectar. Without this lure, they can be very hard to find. When I arrived at the Ninebark patch, I was rewarded by a gorgeous Two-tailed Swallowtail ( Papilio multicaudata ) dancing over the patch, and then occasionally dropping in for some nectar. The afternoon light and the perfect silhouette of the Ninebark flowers' stamens through it's wings was a beautiful sight, reminding me just how thin those scale-covered wings are. After communing with the swallowtail for a few minutes, and watching Northern Checkerspots, California Sisters and Lorquin's Admirals visiting for nectar, I walked further up the road to see what I could see. At a crossing of a tributary stream, I spotted a small, bright orange Arctic Skipper, a couple dusky-looking Boisduval's Blues, and the local and enigmatic Chalcedona/Snowberry Checkerspots. I'm honestly not sure which of the two species I saw. It's possible both species are at this site, but more study is needed to sort that out. If you know of any research in this area, please let me know! Also at the same tributary crossing was a Great Arctic, the third Great Arctic of the day. This was interesting because typically, Great Arctics only fly as adult butterflies every other year, and last year was the primary flight year. So these three were flying in the off year. I'll be curious to see whether Great Arctics are flying at other sites in other parts of Oregon this year as the season progresses. When I walked back down the road, just as I was approaching the famous (to me) Ninebark patch, a small brown butterfly was startled by my arrival. It flew in a fast zigzag pattern to my left towards a Canyon Live Oak tree ( Quercus chrysolepsis ) on the opposite side of the road. I lost track of it as it flew into the shady area beneath the tree. What's interesting about this sighting is that Canyon Live Oak is believed to be the larval host plant for Goldhunter's Hairstreak at this location. And the Goldhunter's is a small brown butterfly that flies fast in a zigzag pattern. Hmmmm. I never found it again, so I'll never know, but I suspect it was Goldhunter's Hairstreak. Rob had reminded me earlier that there is another small brown hairstreak at this site this time of year, and I saw a couple of them the next day: Hedgerow Hairstreak ( Satyrium saepium ). This species uses Ceanothus as its larval host plant, and there was plenty of that around to support them. The two individuals I saw had clearly just eclosed (emerged from their chrysalis), as they were absolutely pristine and velvety looking, indicating no wear on the wings at all. There were so many fun surprises over my two days at Kinney Creek that I didn't mind missing a definitive Goldhunter's Hairstreak sighting at all. My only disappointment was that I had not learned anything about the Goldhunter's population status. Not seeing one is not an indication of its absence--its only an indication of its absence where I was looking, when I was looking. Due to its larval host plant being a tree, and the fact that many of the Canyon Live Oak trees were not close to the road I was walking on, it's very possible that there were some, or even many, individuals in the Live Oak trees up the hill. In the end, I left the site tired, sweaty, and quite satisfied with my experience. It's always fun to get out in the field with Rob, and there were many unexpected photo opportunities. When I tallied my list for the first day, I'd seen 29 species. The second day also turned up 29 species, though not all the same ones. My tally for the two days included a very respectable 35 species and many good photos. I think I will hang on to that strategy of looking instead of looking for .

It's 10 am on August 23, and I've just arrived at the bottom of the tramway that climbs 3,300 feet up to the top of Mount Howard, in the Wallowa Mountains. This will be my third attempt to find and photograph the American Copper (now Lyceana hypophlaeas ) at Mt. Howard since 2017, and this time I'll have help. Mike Hansen used to be the A ssistant District Biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife office in Enterprise, and I knew he had good field skills. N ow that he's retired, like me, he spends a lot more time enjoying chasing birds and butterflies. I hadn't met him in person before, and today we were wearing face masks because of the coronavirus, but we had no problem spotting each other in the parking lot--our binoculars, cameras and backpacks give us away. Mike has also been looking for the American Copper in the Wallowas, and two years ago while I was scouring the south slopes of Mt. Howard, he was searching the other known historical site, near Ice Lake and the Matterhorn. When we compared notes after our 2018 expeditions, we found that we'd had the same experience: plants were dried up, and we saw no sign of American Copper or its suspected host plant, Mountain Sorrel ( Oxyria digyna ). Mike and I share a desire to find out whether this species is still breeding in Oregon. Mike and his partner Kim had seen American Copper in the Seven Devils Mountains across the Snake River in Idaho in late July, 2016. Interestingly, that copper seemed to be associated with a tall species of Rumex , rather than Mountain Sorrel. According to Andy Warren, Ernst Dornfeld proposed Mountain Sorrel as a possible host for American Copper back in 1980, but I'm not aware that anyone has definitively confirmed this in Oregon. A couple of years back, Don Severns shared details with me from the day he and his son Paul found American Copper on Mt. Howard. They found it in August about half-way down a steep talus slope on the south face of Mt. Howard, near Mountain Sorrel. As far as I know, no one has seen one since then. The only other record in Oregon was from decades earlier, when C.W. Nelson found it at 9,500 feet on the Matterhorn, further west in the Wallowas. Mike and I rode the tram up to the summit of Mt. Howard and then hiked away from the small crowd of other tourists near the restaurant at the top of the tram line. Within minutes we were by ourselves. We had to first hike east, and then south to get to where we could cross a steep side slope over to the targeted talus slope. The talus slope was somewhat treacherous for walking on, as the rock was very loose and prone to sliding as soon as we stepped on it. At some points I had to use my hands and feet to keep my place on the hill. This year there were a few butterfly species flying on the talus slope, visiting the bright purple patches of Coyote Mint. Hydaspe and Callippe fritillaries seemed to be most prominent there. We each chose a spot at different elevations on the slope and zig-zagged our way across, up, and down the slope looking for any sign of the coppers or their host plants. When we met up to check in after about 45 minutes, neither of us had seen any coppers, or any dock or sorrel plants. We decided to try the north-facing rocky slope on the far side of the mountain next, as we suspected it would be more moist, and because Mike thought it was more like a site where he had seen a few Mountain Sorrel plants on a recent hike to the west of Mt. Howard. We spent about an hour on that slope, where we ate lunch and enjoyed several more butterfly species, including many Milbert's Tortoiseshells, Mormon Fritillaries, Northern Blues, Juba skippers and some close encounters with Pikas. The Pikas were very sneakily scrambling amongst the rocks under and around us, and occasionally popping up for a loud "peek!" They were quick and hard to catch with a camera, but both Mike and I got some nice photos of them. The north slope was more a boulder field than a talus slope, which is the habitat type we understood to be used by American Coppers in the Wallowas. In the western US, the American Copper is a denizen of the high country, restricted to life on the high slopes of the Sierras, Rocky Mountains, and perhaps, the Wallowa Mountains. Conversely, in the eastern US, American Coppers are widespread in low elevations and in all kinds of habitats, including weedy fields and vacant lots. We saw no coppers or potential hostplants on the north slope either. We decided to finish off the afternoon by skirting the east rim of the summit and visiting some sage meadows and grassy meadows with wildflowers still in bloom. We found several more species in these areas, including many Blue Coppers and Mariposa Coppers. We'd given up on finding American Coppers for the day, and we contented ourselves with padding our species list for the day. As we walked back towards the tram for the ride down the mountain, we discussed potential next steps in our search. We agreed that we probably needed to search earlier in the season, probably in late July based on Mike and Kim's Seven Devils sighting. We speculated that global warming and drying of the summers here had shifted things, perhaps drying out populations and favoring an earlier flight period. We discussed following up on historic sightings of Mountain Sorrel in the Wallowas from the Oregon Flora Project website. As I rode down the tram (social distancing in my own tram car) I wondered if Mountain Sorrel wasn't our target plant after all. I thought about how helpful it would be if we could connect with a mountain-hiking field botanist who knew the habitats, plants and trails of the Wallowas well. If you know someone like this, please help me get in touch with them! Mike and I both felt good about finding 24 species for the day, even if we missed the main target, and we agreed to talk more about how to proceed with the search next year. With only two documented historical records, it would be somewhat of a long-shot. No one knows whether it is still hanging on in some high rocky meadow in the Wallowas. Yet, with global climate change dialing up the summer heat and drought, if we put it off, we might lower our odds of ever finding it again in Oregon.

It seemed like a crazy idea, but then occasionally, crazy ideas actually work out well. The idea was to make a "rocket run" down to the Pueblo Mountains in Harney County to search for the Weidemeyer's Admiral, and return home in just two days. It would require 7 hours of driving each way, and getting up at the birdwatcher's hour of 5:30 am. Which I almost never do by my own choice. But it was either that, or wait another year to find this large, boldly black and white brushfoot butterfly in Oregon. The family of "brushfoot" butterflies are so-called because their front pair of legs (of three pairs) is vestigial, or really tiny. They look like they have four legs, instead of the six that other butterflies have. The rocket-run was an experiment, really, to see if my body (and mind) would handle so much driving in so short a time. I had a window of two days between other activities that were important to me (like hanging out with my friends on July 4), and I calculated that if nothing crazy went wrong, it would all work out. Whether I saw and got photos of the Admiral, well that was outside my control. So I went for it. I had the car totally packed the night before, and when the alarm went off at zero-not-all-that-dark-thirty, I was excited to get going. Okay, I was actually pretty groggy and sluggish, but a shower (my form of coffee) helped with that. I loaded the food into the pre-cooled cooler, and drove away before 7:30 am. So far, so good! The drive went smoothly. Amazingly smoothly. I took brief stretch stops about every 90 minutes. As I was heading south from Burns toward Frenchglen, with about two hours to go, I saw what looked like a mixture of thick clouds and smoke exactly in the direction of the Pueblo Mountains to which I was headed. After a moment of doubt, I decided to stay the course and take my chances with the conditions at Arizona Creek on the east side of the Pueblos. As I crossed over the pass through the Pueblos and headed down to Fields Station, I thanked myself for my stick-to-it-iveness--the smoke and clouds were much further east, leaving the Pueblos as clear as could be. I arrived at Arizona Creek Road at about 1:30 pm and drove up the two miles of well-graded gravel to a grove of recently burned aspen along the creek. Next to the road was the largest patch of intact aspen trees, and the little creek flowed across the road there. Within 30 seconds, I saw a Weidemeyer's Admiral sallying from a perch next to the creek. It returned back to the perch 2 or 3 times, so I grabbed my cameras, and went to work. Shazzam! Within five minutes, I had this shot: Which is Number 148! Except then I lost a species, because a northwest butterfly expert saw my purported photos of Clouded Sulphurs and said they looked like Orange Sulphurs instead. So I'm back to 147 species, but very excited to finally get this guy. Last time I saw one was in 2003. Thank you to Gary Pearson for turning me on to this site! I knew from previous visits to the Pueblos that the Weidemeyer's Admirals here were genetically mixing with Lorquin's Admirals, yielding the "fridayi" form, which shows varying degrees of characteristics from Lorquin's Admirals. The second butterfly I saw after the Weidemeyer's was a Lorquin's Admiral so I expected to find some fridayi individuals. Sure enough over a few hours of wandering around the area, I found two clear Weidemeyer's and about five of the fridayi form. I don't know if it was chance or something else, but both of the Weidemeyer's Admirals were more roughed-up and bird-nipped than the more fresh and whole "fridayi" individuals. The next day, I swung around the south side of the Pueblos into Nevada and made a stopover on the lower west flank of the Warner Mountains. I hoped to find the Great Purple Hairstreak (which is blue, not purple) and the Tailed Copper. After not seeing the Great Purple for 15 years, I saw this one at my first stop on Kelley Creek.

Sometimes, it doesn't have to be difficult. You know how our expectation that something will be difficult can seem to create that very outcome? Well it turns out it can go the other way, too. I had a feeling photographing Ancilla Blue would be easy. I had great information about when and where to look for this species in Hines, Oregon, from a post from Mike Stangeland and Kim Davis on the Butterflies of America website. So I set out on a two day trip to visit Hines, and then go poke around King Mountain, north of Burns. About 18 miles west of Burns/Hines, I stopped at the new Sage Hen Rest Stop to stretch my legs, and use the bathroom. Coming out of the bathroom, I saw up on the slope above the rest stop the bright lemon-yellow blossoms of what looked like Round-headed Buckwheat, the host plant for Ancilla Blue. So I grabbed my binoculars and camera, and wandered over there, with mild anticipation. Within 5 minutes, I had found an Ancilla Blue, and within another 5 minutes, had a nice series of photos. How easy is that? I hadn't even made it all the way to my intended site on the edge of Hines. I thought to myself, "well this balances things out just a little bit, on the other side of all those times I looked for the Nevada Skipper and found bupkus." Bupkus is a yiddish word that means "nothing." The interesting thing is that when I went to the site in Hines, my main destination for this species, I searched and searched, and even though it was the normal time of year for Ancilla to fly, I couldn't find any. A huge patch of Round-headed Buckwheat was in full bloom, but no Ancilla Blues to be found. Lucky that I stopped and looked at the rest stop! Well, I finally did find a couple of ragged looking Ancilla Blues at the Hines site, but it took a long time to find them. According to reports I'd read, in other years at this time of year, there have been 100's of them flying. That's part of the fun and frustration of finding and photographing butterflies--you often can't really predict when and where they will be with any certainty. Striking out is just part of the process. More on that in another post. For now, I celebrate one of the easy ones! Oh and King Mountain was really fun. I saw 23 species along the road to the Lookout there, including this Western Green Hairstreak.

In the central Oregon Cascade Range, as summer pushes on into July and early August, we get into the dreaded fire, smoke and haze season. We also get into the season of nymphalids, or brushfoot butterflies. Many of the skippers, hairstreaks, blues, crescents, and checkerspots of spring and early summer get more scarce or disappear for the season altogether. In their place we see more fritillaries, commas, tortoiseshells and wood nymphs as they come to the fore, especially in those habitats with enough moisture to keep flowers in bloom and to keep puddling spots moist. The Greater Fritillaries in the genus Speyeria are one of these late season groups in the central Cascades, and they are both challenging and intriguing. Over the past few weeks I took five trips into the central Oregon Cascades with an eye out for fritillaries, and of course whatever else happened to be around. I was initially inspired by Lori Humphreys' sighting of two Coronis Fritillaries on Frissell Ridge on the "4th of July" Butterfly Count on July 17. The previous year, we'd found one worn and tattered Coronis on Frissell Ridge on the count, just north of the Linn County-Lane County line. This year's sightings were in Lane County, which I thought might be a county record. However, Lori had already trumped her own sighting on the count with a Coronis Fritillary at Little Groundhog Mountain on July 3. For the count I teamed up with Bruce Newhouse, an accomplished botanist, butterflier, all around naturalist and good friend, and we had a splendid day of counting and photographing butterflies on the south half of Frissell Ridge, tallying 28 species for the day, including four species of fritillaries (see full species lists below). The subspecies of Coronis that we get in Lane County is the central Oregon one, Speyeria coronis simaetha . These are often larger than most of our fritillary species and often noticeably lighter orange on the upper side. On the underside, or ventral side, the silver spots on the hindwing are large and oblong, with brown "shadows" against a tan background. Partly based on last year's sighting, I had assumed that any Coronis we'd find in Lane County would be quite worn, presumably having made a long trip from the high desert. So to see the fresh individual that Lori found on Frissell Ridge got me curious. On the Butterfly Count, Bruce and I saw one of Lori's Coronis Fritillaries, as well as Northwestern Fritillary ( Speyeria hesperis dodgei ), Callippe Fritillary ( Speyeria callippe elaine ) and Hydaspe Fritillary ( Speyeria hydaspe minor ), though none were in significant numbers. Overall the species diversity for the count was well below average, but we found much higher numbers of Mariposa Coppers ( Lycaena mariposa ) and Sylvan Hairstreaks ( Satyrium sylvinus ) than on past counts. Next up was a visit to Little Groundhog Mountain south of Oakridge with Gary Pearson. Gary had recently posted a photo online of a very small Callippe Fritillary ( Speyeria callippe ) with strong gray-green shading on the ventral hindwing. I was curious to see and photograph these, so Gary and I decided to visit there on July 23. We knew of a roadside patch of coyote mint ( Monardella villosa ) on the east slope of the mountain that is a great fritillary magnet, so after some meandering about we headed up there. The Monardella patch did not disappoint--it was thick with butterflies, especially fritillaries. One of the fun and/or challenging aspects of identifying Speyeria is that each of our 8 species has several subspecies in Oregon, and the subspecies can look very different from each other. To add to the "fun," (e.g., the occasional tearing out of one's hair) a subspecies of one fritillary species can look very much like a subspecies of another fritillary species, so depending on where you are, and which subspecies occur there, you may have a nice ID challenge on your hands. Most likely, you will have to study those fritillaries very carefully, especially the underside pattern, and know which subspecies occur where you are. I have found that there is an extremely small number of people who can quickly and confidently identify all the subspecies of all the species of fritillaries in Oregon. Actually that number is 1. That one person is Paul Hammond at the Oregon State Arthropod Collection. If your name isn't Paul Hammond, the good news is, when you are stumped in trying to identify a fritillary you see, you are in a very large club, and in very good company! In the case of these little Callippe Fritillaries at Little Groundhog, that green-gray shading on the ventral hindwing is a very good field mark to rule out our other Speyeria species. If that gray-green shading is worn off, and if you haven't seen any fresh individuals, that makes the ID game more challenging. I spent a good 90 minutes kneeling in the rocks, trying to get a good photo of a fresh Callippe. Time and again, just as I got the camera aimed and ready, a fly, bee or another butterfly would buzz my target and it would fly before I got the shot. Other times, the darn bug would never face the direction that would show its dorsal pattern in the sun. If I moved to get a better angle, it would fly. Even my compatriot Gary got in on the act, excitedly netting a nice fresh, well-marked Callippe that I was also watching (I didn't have my camera on it yet--Gary is very conscientious about not interfering with butterfly photographers). With persistence I did get some satisfying shots of those little Callippes, though none was as fresh and strongly marked with that gray-green shading as I'd hoped. Fortunately, there's always next year! At this coyote mint patch, the little Callippe Fritillaries were the most numerous, with Hydaspe Fritillaries a close second. We also saw 3 Northwestern Fritillaries ( Speyeria hesperis dodgei ), 3 large Coronis Fritillaries ( Speyeria coronis simaetha ), and just as we were leaving, a single female Great Spangled Fritillary ( Speyeria cybele pugatensis ) flew over the car. The 22 species we saw in total were fewer than I typically see at this site in early July, when its rare to see fewer than 30 species. The following day, I decided to visit Box Canyon Meadows, another good late season site north of Oakridge in Lane County. When I arrived, the meadows appeared to be in good condition, and lots of nectar plants were blooming. I stepped out of the car and looked around, and within a couple of minutes I noticed that I couldn't see a single butterfly flying. Which was very strange for a warm sunny day in late July at an excellent meadow site. In the first 30 minutes I saw so few butterflies that I nearly decided to pack it in and l head home. Instead, I did a little scouting of some nearby Forest Service roads that I hadn't been on, looking for patches of Golden Chinkapin ( Chrysolepis chrysophylla), the larval host plant for the Golden Hairstreak ( Habrodais grunus ). My scouting route eventually took me back through the main meadows and I decided to stop and commit to spending a couple hours searching the full extent of the meadows. What I found was a somewhat unusual combination of high species diversity with very low numbers. For example, in the past at this time of year I had seen many Mormon Fritillaries ( Speyeria mormonia erinna ) here, but on this beautiful day, I had to work hard to find just 3. Western Branded Skippers ( Hesperia colorado nr . oregonia ), Anna's Blue ( Plebejus anna ricei ) and Common Wood Nymphs ( Cercyonis pegala incana ) were the most common species, with most others just represented by one or a few individuals. As I ate my lunch, it occurred to me that I had never searched in the small sun-dappled meadows in the patch of forest at the north end of the main meadows. I wandered over there after lunch, and chased a couple of fritillaries that I could neither catch up with nor identify. As I was walking out of the forest, a large, bright female Great Spangled Fritillary ( Speyeria cybele pugatensis ) flew past me and then back into the small clearing I had just walked through. It's uncommon for me to get a good opportunity to photograph a fresh female Great Spangled, so I turned back to follow it. It didn't appear to be laying eggs, or even looking for host plants. It would fly around a bit, then perch. Then do it again. I followed it through several cycles of this behavior before I had a good angle from a close enough position. Fortunately it was in the sun, and I wasn't. Click! I only saw that one Great Spangled that day, so I was grateful to get a photo of her. However, she was not the only fritillary frolicking in the forest. Remember those two Speyeria that I hadn't caught up with? After thinking for the second time that I was ready to call it a day, another orange fritillary zipped across one of the small openings in the forest--only this one was large and pale orange. It seemed to have the same modus operandi as that female Great Spangled (flying, perching, flying, perching, etc.). Again, I couldn't detect any ovipositing activity. I wondered if it was newly eclosed, and not at full flight strength yet. Just like the Great Spangled female had done, this one landed in a small sunny opening in the forest. Again I used the shadows to cloak my very slow approach, and again it worked. I got close enough for a good ventral view, and saw those large, oblong silver spots on the hindwing, with brown shadows on a tan background. Amazing! This was my 6th Coronis Fritillary in Lane County this year! A week later I decided to visit the grassy meadows around Lost Lake in Linn County, just over the Cascade Crest on Highway 20. I was partly inspired by past reports of Checkered Whites at this site, so in addition to the fritillaries, I had my eye out for whites. Thus far in 2021, I had seen very few California Tortoiseshells, a brushfoot species whose populations mysteriously boom and bust from year to year. On the mudflats at the edge of the summer remnant of the lake, I saw several times more of them than I'd seen everywhere else this year combined. My estimate of 75 individuals was likely greatly under-representative. The other dominant species was Western White, a species I had never seen in such numbers before at any single site. After chasing whites through the grassy meadow, and photographing commas on the mud flats, I made my sweaty way back to the car for lunch. While I was munching on crackers and black bean dip, I noticed a very bright orange fritillary nectaring in a small patch of asters in a shady spot to my left. I set my half-eaten lunch down, grabbed my camera and walked over there. Since I over the crest of the Cascades, I knew I had a chance at a couple of east side Speyeria species including Zerene Fritillary ( Speyeria zerene picta ) and possibly (wishfully) Great Basin Fritillary ( Speyeria egleis moecki ). When I got close enough to get a good look through my binoculars, I knew I had a Zerene. The bold pattern of elongated silver spots on the ventral hindwing, with bold red shadows on a tan background is distinctive. It was kind enough to hang around long enough to allow me to get both ventral and dorsal photos, always a great luxury with Speyeria . Back at my car, resuming my lunch, I had the thought that this might be the closest site to Eugene for Zerene Fritillary, given that the Willamette Valley subspecies ( Speyeria zerene Willamette Valley segregate) is now considered extinct. Later, I realized it was possible that one of the smaller coastal populations of the Oregon Silverspot ( Speyeria zerene hippolyta ) might be closer. That sequence of thoughts led me to make a date with the Oregon Silverspot later in August! In all, I found 12 species at Lost Lake, and got a lot of practice identifying Western Whites--making sure they weren't Checkered Whites. I saw two more Zerene Fritillaries on the mud flats, along with a dozen Hoary Comma ( Polygonia gracilis zephyrus ), a Green Comma ( Polygonia faunus rusticus ), and a Mourning Cloak ( Nymphalis antiopa antiopa) . After my Lost Lake trip, I now had six Speyeria species in this run. It seemed like a good idea to keep going and try for Mormon Fritillary ( Speyeria mormonia erinna ) also. So my last trip of this Speyeria series was a visit to the Scott Lake area along Highway 242 in eastern Lane County, on the edge of the grand and glorious Three Sister's Wilderness. My friend Magnus Persmark joined me for the day, and our plan was to focus on birding, especially in the morning, and to spend some time with the butterflies in the afternoon. I let Magnus know that I was keen on photographing Mormon Fritillary, and since that would be a new species for him, that was no problem. The first spot we explored was a burned area south of Scott Lake, with a dry stream channel that was supporting a lot of wildflowers. After finding and watching a family threesome of Black-backed Woodpeckers in the morning, there was a "whole lot of nothing" going on with the birds, so although we kept trying, we had much better luck with the butterflies. After an hour or two of dismal birding, we spontaneously and melodramatically dubbed our birding experience the "Silence of the Birds" (cue the spooky background music). We joked a lot about how incredibly quiet it was in terms of bird sightings, songs and sounds. Lots of birds are molting (losing their old feathers and growing new ones) this time of year so they are naturally more quiet and hidden, but this day was extremely quiet! We speculated that perhaps the heavy wildfire smoke in the area the day before might have further dampened the birds' singing, and perhaps driven some birds off the ridge in search of cleaner air. From my past visits to the area, I knew that it would not be hard to find Mormon Fritillaries flying this time of year. Indeed, we saw them at each of the sites. However, the second site, Hand Lake, was hands down the hotspot for them. I counted 25, but there were likely several times that number. The lower areas and the partially shaded fringes of the meadow sported healthy patches of asters and that's were the fritillaries were. We continued cracking jokes about the Silence of the Birds as we walked through the meadows to the lake and then down to the south end of the meadows. We saw lots of the Mormon Fritillaries zipping around the large meadow, but we just couldn't get close enough to them for photos. After slowly zig-zagging through most of the meadow, we finally found one--perhaps very recently eclosed--that wasn't so skittish and zippy. We snuck up to it and got some nice photos of it nectaring. Then we spotted another Coronis Fritillary a ways off, but again couldn't get close to it. About the time our grumbling stomachs started hollering at us to head back to the car, another Coronis came into view and landed not far from us--a poser. This would be my 7th Coronis Fritillary in Lane County this year! The final site of the day was the nearby Summit Meadow, tucked amongst the trees on the east side of Highway 242. The light was just beginning to fade as the orange haze-dampened sun sank lower in the west. We spent about a half hour walking around the meadow and saw mostly Mormon Fritillaries, and one Hydaspe. Then at the far end of the meadow, a nice look at yet another Coronis fritillary--my 8th in Lane County in less than 3 weeks! In all my previous years of chasing, watching and photographing butterflies in Lane County, I had never seen a Coronis Fritillary in the county. So seeing 8 of them in the last 3 weeks across 5 different sites in Lane County was astounding! It might not be enough to call it an irruption of the species into Lane County, but it really stands out among my sightings this summer. Over these last five trips, I recorded 50 total species and over 1,000 individuals. It was especially satisfying to find and photograph all 7 of the Speyeria species that occur in the central Cascades. I'd missed only the Great Basin Fritillary ( Speyeria egleis moecki ) among our 8 Oregon species (and that would be a very rare find in this area). It was a great opportunity to practice identifying Speyeria in the field, as well as back home while going through my photos. It's not that uncommon for me to revise an ID of a fritillary after studying my photos at home, or to send a photo to someone more skilled in their identification than I am. I did revise one of my IDs from Frissell Ridge based on photos, realizing that I had mistaken a Speyeria hesperis dodgei for a dark Speyeria hydaspe minor . No shame there! These S peyeria can stump the best of us. Several of my friends and colleagues have suggested that I create a guidebook to the Greater Fritillaries of Oregon based on photos of live butterflies. Certainly, I see how helpful that would be for folks trying to ID them in the field. I continue to ponder the idea. I will likely take an inventory of which subspecies I am missing the fall just to see where I stand. And I do plan to go after the Oregon Silverspot yet this summer, so that would add another Zerene Fritillary subspecies to my portfolio. Honestly, it would be great fun to get out to the NE and SE corners of the state and to the Warner Mountains to photograph those Speyeria subspecies that I haven't captured with my camera yet. For now, though, my mind is on finding those elusive last 5 species that are breeding (theoretically, at least sporadically) in Oregon: Checkered White, Spring White, American Copper, Gillett's Checkerspot and Compton's Tortoiseshell. Here's to clean air, and healthy habitats! Frissell Ridge, Lane County, July 17, 2021, 28 species: Little Groundhog Mountain, Lane County, July 23, 2021, 22 species: Box Canyon Meadows, Lane County, July 24, 2021, 28 species: Lost Lake, Linn County, August 1, 2021, 12 species: Scott Lake Area, Lane County, August 4, 2021, 15 species:

The Oregon Silverspot ( Argynnis zerene hippolyta ) is a subspecies of the Zerene Fritillary ( Argynnis zerene ), found along the Oregon coast and in the Coast Range, in just a few locations. It's one of two butterflies whose common name includes "Oregon," and it's one of three butterflies found in Oregon that are protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act. The Oregon Silverspot is listed as Threatened under the ESA, and its habitats along the coast are protected under that law. If you pay attention to latin names of butterflies, right about now you might be thinking "hey, wait a minute-- Argynnis zerene ? Where did that come from? I thought the Zerene Fritillary was in the genus Speyeria !" Well, it was . But then last year, a group of scientists published an article summarizing the taxonomic results from a massive DNA analysis of all North American butterflies (north of Mexico). Their findings have affected the taxonomy (official naming and classification) of 6% of North America's butterflies. Among other findings, they found that the group of butterflies that had been in the genus Speyeria really belonged in the genus Argynnis , because genetically speaking those in the Speyeria group were essentially subspecies of Argynnis . Confusing, I know. Here in Oregon, we will be seeing these taxonomic changes showing up over the coming months as the various online and printed sources catch up with these recent findings: As describec above, the genus Speyeria becomes Argynnis Most of our coppers change from the genus Lycaena to the genus Tharsalea , giving us Tailed Copper ( Tharsalea arota) , Ruddy Copper ( Tharsalea rubida) , Great Copper ( Tharsalea xanthoides) , Edith's Copper ( Tharsalea editha) , Blue Copper ( Tharsalea heteronea) , Gorgon Copper ( Tharsalea gorgon) , Lilac-bordered Copper ( Tharsalea nivalis) , Purplish Copper ( Tharsalea helloides) and Mariposa Copper ( Tharsalea mariposa) Our Ochre orCommon Ringlet is now Coenonympa californica , since it was split from Coenonympa tullia . What is now C. tullia is found in far northern North America and Europe. Our Arctic Skipper is now Carterocephalus skada , having been split from it's former Carterocephalus palaemon and a new species called Carterocephalus mandan . The study also suggests changes to the naming and classification of cloudywings, tortoiseshells, and commas, but there remain some mixed views on those changes at this point. Okay, now that we have that cleared up (?!), let's get back to our Silverspots! As I wrote last time, after seeing seven species of greater fritillaries in the central Cascades in recent weeks, I was inspired to finally go find and photograph our threatened subspecies of Zerene Fritillary, the Oregon Silverspot. The most robust Silverspot population is up on Mt. Hebo along the Tillamook/Yamhill county line, southeast of the town of Tillamook. It's about a two and a half hour drive from Eugene. With a weather forecast of haze and high heat, I hoped it would be tolerable up on the mountain. Indeed, when I arrived at about 11 am, it was hazy and already getting hot. My first stop was in a large, dry meadow near some radio facilities in the NW corner of Yamhill County, where I found my first Oregon Silverspot within minutes, nectaring on Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea). I decided to settle down next to a nice patch of those flowers, hoping I could just wait for them to come to me. However, I found that when I sat very still next to a good nectar plant, the Silverspots virtually never came to that plant, though they would visit other plants nearby. This rendered my preferred "stakeout" tactic essentially useless. Surprisingly, I found that I could walk up slowly to a plant with one or more Silverspots on it and kneel down slowly and they would not fly off. I saw about 20 Silverspots in that first meadow and got some nice photos with my "molasses in winter" approach technique. There were also a number of Woodland Skippers ( Ochlodes sylvanoides ) and a couple Hydaspe Fritillaries ( Argynnis hydaspe ) there. At about noon, the sun was getting quite warm, so I took a break, had a snack, and then headed toward the next meadow, just over the county line. My plan was to scout all the meadows just to get to know the area better. The second meadow was also quite dry, and I found very few nectar plants there. All of the Silverspots were on the move, with females looking for larval host plants ( Viola adunca ) among the dominant stubby ferns and salal, and males looking for females--no posing Silverspots there! Just as I was finishing my circle through the large meadow, I heard a car pull up behind mine, and then watched a man who appeared to be walking quite purposefully toward me. Immediately, I heard a voice in my mind say "am I getting ticketed for something?" Then I realized he wasn't in uniform, and probably just wanted to chat, so I headed towards him also. As I got closer, I recognized Paul Hammond, Oregon's top fritillary expert coming my way. What great luck! Paul was close to finishing up his annual two-day survey of the Silverspots, and he offered to show me the hotspots in the area. I couldn't have dreamed up a better chance encounter than Paul, who knows this site and this butterfly better than anyone else. Paul updated me on his survey, reporting that he had found over 1400 Silverspots, and he said overall they were doing pretty well. On one of the wetter meadows, he showed me where mechanical vegetation management was helping not only the Silverspot's larval host plant, but also an important native nectar plant, Indian Thistle ( Cirsium edule ). Within a couple years of the vegetation management intervention, the Silverspots began to show up, and today they are abundant there. As we walked around the sites, I peppered him with every greater fritillary question that had been rattling around in my mind of late. One topic was my curiosity as to why I found eight Coronis Fritillaries in Lane County after never seeing one in Lane County previously. Paul described the intense drought conditions he'd recently seen in eastern Oregon, and the virtual absence of nectar sources in large areas. He conjectured that these Coronis Fritillaries had flown west in search of nectar for their very survival. Paul noted that while we often think of the importance of larval host plants for the survival of butterflies, the nectar plants they need are equally important. The meadow where we stood, with it's robust patch of Indian Thistle, was a case in point. I saw more Silverspots there than in the other two larger meadows combined. Paul pointed out a Hydaspe Fritillary ( Argynnis hydaspe ) and noted that Hydaspes at Mt. Hebo are notably larger than those in the Cascades. I had noticed that right off-- they were so large that at a distance I had at first wondered if they were Great Spangled Fritillaries ( Argynnis cybele ). Before Paul headed off to finish up his work for the day, he mentioned that this area was quite good for the very dark western subspecies of the Oreas Comma ( Polygonia oreas silenus ) but that they usually came out a bit later in the year. Only minutes after Paul left, I spied a freshly eclosed Oreas clinging to a thistle stalk across the meadow a ways. As I walked over to get closer for a photo, it flew zig-zag fashion to a conifer tree at the edge of the meadow. Sitting there perfectly still, as if believing it was invisible, it let me get very close, and take several photos. At the end of the day, I was quite contented to have finally photographed the other "Oregon" butterfly, after finally capturing the Oregon Swallowtail this past spring. My chance meeting with the affable and humble Paul Hammond was a wonderful surprise. I headed home better acquainted with the Silverspot and it's Mt. Hebo home than I had expected to. Now I'm looking forward to getting a copy his updated and explanded book on Colias sulphurs, co-authored by Dave McCorkle. Here is my species list for the day (9 species):

I don't know why Ditch Creek in the Blue Mountains of Morrow County is so-named. It's really quite a lovely little stream, meandering through meadows of grasses and wildflowers. It is the place that Entomologist Andy Warren, now of the McGuire Center in Florida, recommended I look for the Pink-Edged Sulphur. I'd visited a couple times in the early 2000's and got inspired to go back again. The name Pink-edged Sulphur is a bit misleading because virtually all of our sulphur species have pink edges on their wings. For instance, the female Western Sulphur below that I saw and photographed in the meadows along Ditch Creek. The black over-scaling on the hindwing and the pointed forewing tell us its a Western Sulphur. The previous times I'd been to Ditch Creek I was rewarded with a rich diversity of species, and this year was no exception. You can see a list of the species I recorded at the end of this piece. I did not find any Pink-Edged Sulphurs, just Western and Orange Sulphurs, but I did get a jaw-dropping opportunity to photograph a male Blue Copper that had just emerged from its chrysalis and was drying its wings in the sunny spells between the morning clouds: Although I didn't end up in the ditch along Ditch Creek, I did get a flat tire from a rock in the ditch along the road, the first in my new Subaru Forester. I was amused by the folks driving by and how they responded to seeing me completely unpacking the pile of camping gear in the back of my car to get to the spare. That's when I rediscovered that the spare tire is one of those wimpy "donut" spares. Some of the passersby smiled and waved. Others just plowed on past, dusting me with the plume behind their truck. The two guys in the one truck that stopped were the most entertaining. They displayed good "man-etiquette" and said, "it looks like you got this handled, but is there anything you need?" I thought that was a nice display of culturally appropriate (for Morrow County) emotional intelligence. I had to drive on miles of gravel roads, and then another 100 miles on pavement on that spare to get to the nearest Les Schwab dealer in La Grande to get the flat fixed. Luckily, the donut did the job, and I was able to complete the rest of the trip with no further mishaps. Here's a list of what I saw:

After all that snow, who thought we'd see multiple days of 70+ degrees so soon! While we were throwing off our jackets and running gleefully outside like giddy children, the warmth allowed some of the early season butterfly species to "throw off" their chrysalides and emerge into the sunlight also. I saw my first butterfly of 2019 on March 11, my mother's birthday, a fast fly-by California Tortoiseshell, along the Middle Fork of the Willamette. A few days later, another Tortoiseshell in the same area. That was enough motivation to get me to go out a couple times to see which species were out and about. After a lucky morning of birding in Linn County, I headed to Fitton Green Natural Area near Corvallis, and it did not disappoint! Within minutes I saw a California Tortoiseshell, and then another. I probably saw 15-20 of them altogether. Next, that flash of lavender-blue that only a Spring Azure has, and to my delight, it perched on the wet trail not far away. I got down in the mud, and scooted my way in slowly for several shots of the unique ventral wing pattern. As I continued on down Cardwell Hill Trail, I started seeing nice seepy areas in the ditch along the road. I'll admit I was hoping for Oreas Comma, but I was not disappointed to see a freshly eclosed Green Comma. Green Commas can sometimes be tricky to separate from Oreas Comma at first glance, especially if the underside of the hindwing is dark and lacks the characteristic green band this species usually has. In this case, the green band was not lacking, in fact it was quite bold. No mistake on this one. Oreas would be very dark below, and the white mark on the hindwing below would be a flattened white "v" with a point at the bottom, so there was nothing fuzzy about this ID. I was very satisfied seeing these species and one Satyr Comma that I was not able to photograph--a very good day for March! Over dinner, my friend Bruce was talking about early season butterflies and habitats and reminded my of a favorite of mine, Jasper Rocks, near Springfield. It's a great spot to see one of our other early fliers, Moss's Elfin. When I arrived, the sun was streaming down, and next to the south facing cliffs the temperature felt close to 80 degrees. I was sweating in a t-shirt, in March! Moss's Elfins are small and dark and fast-flying, so it can take a few minutes to train your eye to spot them zipping around from branch to flower to rock. Sometimes it's their shadow that you see first, because the shadow below is bigger than the butterfly above. Their host plant in our area, Sedum oreganum, grows best on rocky, "cliffy," south-facing sites, and Jasper Rocks has some of just that. I saw a total of 7 of these beautiful little dark brown gems, and all of them were so bright and fresh that they probably had eclosed from their chrysalides that very morning. I only had about 45 minutes to poke around, but that was long enough to also see a Spring Azure and a Satyr Comma cruising by. I call this a great start to the 2019 butterfly season! I hope you were able to get out and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather too! And let's hope the rain comes back soon!

The Senoi people of the Malaysian peninsula teach their children that, when the child encounters a dangerous animal or monster in their dreams, the child should turn and face the monster or animal the next time it appears in their dreams. In general, the children are taught to confront and conquer all forms of danger in their dreams. This fascinating cultural practice comes to mind when I think of my experience of the last few days. Most of the time, when I go out in search of butterflies, it is a supremely enjoyable experience. I'm in a beautiful natural landscape with birds singing, wildflowers, lovely blue sky, and fresh air imbued with the smells of the wild. The conditions are comfortable, and I'm drawn to do this just because it is a source of pleasure. Most of the time. However, not all butterflies evolve ecological niches that are so accommodating of humans and their needs and likes (at least those of this human). Some butterflies live out their lives in the bleakest of landscapes, in the harshest of conditions, at the peak of sweltering, withering summer heat. The Mojave Sootywing is one of these. It's a small dark brown skipper with small white spots on the forewings. As its name implies, it is primarily a bug of wickedly hot deserts in Mexico and California, and its range just edges over the state line into SE Oregon's great basin country. I'd been looking for the Mojave Sootywing for several years in the area around Summer Lake in late July and early August. In that grand-scale landscape, late July and August offer up temperatures from 95 - 100 degrees F, exceedingly dry air, and skin shriveling winds. This harsh ecoregion supports only plants that can handle its extreme conditions, such as saltbush, rabbitbrush, tumbleweed, and sagebrush. Many of these denizens of the alkali flats and salt scrubs of the great basin have thorns to discourage the deer and antelope from eating them. Rattlesnakes are very common in this area. And because the managed wetlands of Summer Lake are nearby, the silence is broken by the whine of hoards of mosquitos. I don't know about you, but for me it's just not a particularly pleasant place to spend a day or two in late July. In spite of these prospects of discomfort, I'd resolved to spend up to three days searching for the Mojave Sootywing near Ana Reservoir, around Summer Lake, and if necessary, at the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. These three locations are known for past sightings of Mojave Sootywing, so focusing there would theoretically increase my odds of finding it. Corvallis lepidopterist Dana Ross had found the Mojave Sootywing at Ana Reservoir, so I made that site number one. I'd previously made the trek down to the Summer Lake area to look for the Mojave Sootywing in 2004, 2006, and 2014 and came up empty all three times. This time, however, I was better educated, better prepared and planned to arrive earlier in the flight period of the sootywing. On July 26, I left Eugene early, trying to reach Ana Reservoir by midday. As I came over Picture Rock Pass, my heart sank as I saw a thick cloud of smoke in the south end of the valley, coming from the Garner Complex fire near Roseburg. About 1:30 pm, after a brief stop up in Picture Rock Pass, just a few miles from the reservoir, I arrived at Ana Reservoir County Park. It was about 97 degrees. Everyone else in the area was either fishing or swimming in the reservoir. I headed off into the scrub with my wide-brimmed hat, camera, binos, field notebook and water. Below the reservoir, is a round, bowl-shaped drainage that I've come to call "the bowl," which slopes down to the Ana River below the dam. The bowl is where Dana Ross and several others have seen the Mojave Sootywing. It is also where there are a lot of mosquitoes and rattlesnakes. I spent about two hours spiraling and criss-crossing through the bowl and the surrounding scrub, through the thorny saltbush, thistles, teasel, working up a pretty good sweat, slapping away at the mosquitos buzzing my ears. I saw very few butterflies in total and only four species: Mourning cloak, Lorquin's admiral, Woodland skipper, and Yuma Skipper (another specialty of this site, which I'd seen on several occasions). At about 3:30 pm, I was overheated and spent, so I headed to my lodgings for the night at the Summer Lake Hot Springs Resort. That night I reviewed my overall search plan, and concluded that since I had never looked for the Mojave Sootywing at the Hart Mountain Refuge, I should get up early and make the 3-hour drive down there the following morning. Bob Pyle's wonderful new butterfly guide "Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest" noted Hart Mountain as a good site for the sootywing. I wrote to Bob and asked if he knew any details of where in the large refuge it had been found and he apologized and said he didn't. So I called the refuge office and described my search with a request for any advice from the refuge biologist. Zack, the affable and helpful maintenance guy for the refuge, made a few inquiries on my behalf, and reported back that I might try looking around Flook Lake. My own analysis told me that searching along the edge of the refuge adjacent to the Warner Lakes would be another likely area, so I planned to visit both. The drive to Hart Mountain was lovely in the early morning light, with almost no other traffic on the road. The route took me through Paisley, Valley Falls, Plush and a lot of wide open sage scrub. As I drove along in the wide open spaces alone, I listened to a fascinating audio book on social neurobiology--all about how our brains are designed to help us navigate the complexities of our relationships with other people. I guessed that those functions in my brain wouldn't be needed much today. Flook Lake is on the east side of the refuge, and I decided to check it out first. The route to the lake took me steeply up the west side of Hart Mountain, and then across the relatively flat and very dry central plateau. At this time of year Flook Lake is not a lake but a shallow depression where a lake might be seen during the wet part of the year. Within 5 minutes of my arrival there, I circled right around and headed back the way I'd come. The Flook Lake area was indeed very dry and salty, but there was no plant there taller than six inches, making it obvious that the host plant of the Mojave Sootywing, Fourwing Saltbush (4-6 feet tall) wasn't anywhere in the area. So I headed down to the Warner Lakes area to continue the search. The Warner Lakes area is quite beautiful, especially looking down from Hart Mountain. It's a complex mosaic of blue lakes, dark green wetlands and white alkali flats. When I got down to the edge of the refuge, I decided to try the road along Flagstaff Lake which seemed to have the best access to the salt scrub habitat I was looking for. This was a really interesting area, with scattered huge mounds of rabbitbrush covered with golden-yellow flowers and on some of them, hundreds of butterflies. I had never seen so many Ruddy Coppers--in fact that day I saw ten times more of them than I'd seen altogether in my previous 10 years of butterflying all over Oregon. One particular gigantic rabbitbrush shrub about 200 feet from the lake was like the motherlode of butterflies. There were probably a couple hundred Ruddy Coppers, dozens of Purplish Coppers, and a smattering of Western Whites, Queen Alexandra Sulphurs, Western Branded Skippers, Mylitta Crescents, Coronis Fritillaries, Great Basin Wood-nymphs, and a small Euphilotes blue that I haven't identified yet--all on one shrub! Really fun to see, though not what I drove all the way out there for. So I packed it in and started the 3-hour drive back to my cozy cabin at the Hot Springs. That night I debated with myself about whether to keep searching for the sootwing, and be uncomfortable and possibly get further frustrated and discouraged, or to abandon the quest and go somewhere more pleasant in the Warner Mountains with greater butterfly diversity. This debate (in my mind) between the possibly disappointing and certainly uncomfortable unknown and the predictable and pleasant known went on all through my dinner. I watched myself leaning toward the more pleasant and dependable experience I would have in the Warners, and giving up on the Sootywing search--because the latter would be harder, more unpleasant, and if I wasn't successful, disappointing. As I was washing the dinner dishes, I rallied. No, I said to myself, I need to keep looking. If I give up now I am guaranteeing that I won't find it yet again this year. I'm going back to Ana Reservoir tomorrow, and I'm starting early and will look all day if I need to. That is how I'm going give myself a chance to find it. Next morning, I woke up uncharacteristically early for me, around 6:30 am, with the morning sun pouring in the cabin windows. I made a breakfast of chicken sausage and pancakes with blueberries, strawberries and yogurt. I packed up all my gear and checked out of my cabin. It was 8:30 am. The drive to Ana Reservoir took about a half hour, and I pulled into the park a little after 9 am. It was already hot, but nothing like my afternoon visit a couple days ago. As I got out of the car, I felt optimistic, not in the "I'm going to be lucky" kind of way, but in the "I'm really going to give this a full effort today" kind of way. I mentally handed over the possibility of finding the Sootywing to a higher power and resolved to enjoy the search, regardless of the outcome. That surrender seemed to take the pressure off in my mind, and I felt more light-hearted about the search. It helped also that thanks to a shift in the wind, the sky was now pure bright blue, instead of smoke-haze tan. Over the first hour, I was heartened by the fact that I was seeing a lot more butterflies and more diversity than I ever had before at Ana Reservoir. I had seen four species in each of my previous visits, but I had more than that in the first hour. As the day went on, I continued to see more and more species ( total of 17 species for the day), but no Sootywing. I took a break from the heat and sun and refilled my water bottle at about 11:30 am. I had a small snack, and cranked myself back up for another round of spirals and zigzags through the bowl and surrounding scrub. It was getting really hot now, and I pondered how long I should keep trudging through the thorny scrub in this heat. I'd been searching for 2 1/2 hours, and I said to myself "okay, this will be the last circuit through the site." I'd covered the area of the bowl very thoroughly, multiple times, and it seemed that if the Sootywing was here, I would have found it by now. As I headed back down into the bowl, a quiet wave of confidence washed over me for a moment. I started up at the rim of the bowl, and zigzagged down and across, skirting the blooming rabbitbrush shrubs, and the patches of blooming thistle. At the bottom of the bowl is a grassy wetland area that was mostly dry, but thick with mosquitos. This morning I had put on bug repellent, so I headed right into the middle of the mosquito zone. I circled around the wetland area, and crossed the little creek a couple of times, and saw many Sylvan Hairstreaks, Cabbage whites, and western branded skippers. I told myself, "this is the last circuit, then I'll go." I crossed the little creek again, and immediately saw something fly fast and low to my right, something that appeared different from what I'd been seeing. Time for "Tai Chi mode," the very slow walking and moving that hopefully won't scare away whatever it is. I came around a clump of grass, and there, nectaring happily on a 12" tall thistle was a fresh female Mojave Sootywing. Bingo! Shazam! Woot-woot! That's half the battle--now if I can just get some decent photos! I started snapping photos as I very slowly moved closer. After 6 or 8 photos, she took wing and zipped off, never to be seen again. Now my attitude completely changed. I knew it was here, now. I decided to break for lunch and keep looking, since ideally I wanted photos of both the male and female, and of both the upper and underside of the butterfly. Standing on a rise, I scanned the area east of the bowl to see if there was more of the lush and low wetland habitat, and there were a couple patches along the river. I circled back up and out of the bowl and crossed over to the other side of the Ana River. Along that far bank, I saw a couple of males, but got only one blurry and out-of-focus photo. A few minutes later, I spotted another fresh female, and got lucky as it stayed perched while I slowly moved in for a shot of the creamy and lights-spotted underside. As I was leaving the site a half-hour later, I pondered how my decision to make the uncomfortable choice paid off. As I drove the three hours back to Eugene, I thought about other areas of life in which I sometimes chose the stay-comfortable route, when the willingness to be uncomfortable might well have yielded a more satisfying outcome. Like the Senoi parents coaching their children for the next nights dreams, I took home an appreciation for facing the monster, and a memory of an experience that would help motivate me to make that choice again.