Recent sightings

3:26pm Pentax k-3II, SMCP-DA* 300mm f/4 - 3:26pm

Low 80's, sunny and humid.

Found along path in Restored Prairie area

All Azures very bright with very clear markings, and all but this one on gravel lanes.

brief sighting as it madly fluttered around in high wind, so no good photos.

Found two American Ladies on an apple tree on our property.

Found on the floor of our garage

Hot, humid, sunny

20 species.

Early afternoon, full sun, also blueberries.

There may be a few skippers that I did not ID correctly.

We are now seeing Monarchs on a regular basis in the yard and garden. Our current census includes 68 eggs, 13 small instars, 21 larger cats, and 5 in a chrysalis.

All before 1pm. Heat and humidity building. Also had a Fritillary (probably Great Spangled) that never landed and a Tiger Swallowtail.

Sunny and pleasant today

Devil's Lake, prairie path by south entrance. Common Wood Nymph on Culver's Root, Viceroy and Pearl Crescent in the parking lot! Just one of each.

Quick stop to see what might be there. Was happy to see the rare Sleepy Orange for the sixth time in eleven years at this site.

Someone put up a "Road Closed" sign in this wetland road, but it doesn't seem to stop some ATV riders. 3-4:30 pm, full sun, slight breeze.

82° Mostly Sunny. The Prairie Enthusiast annual Picnic and fieldtrips. **Prior permission is needed to enter Fort McCoy**
Doreen and I only covered a small portion of roadway(less than 1/2 mile). We had an AM. Copper that wanted to read about butterflies.

This was the 21st annual NABA Butterfly Count at Northern Kettle Moraine. Counters Peter Fissel, Karl and Dorothy Legler and two others counted for 7.0 hours, finding 248 butterflies of 35 species. Gray Comma had its highest count (6). Notable were Striped Hairstreak and Little Glassywing.

Mustard Whites everywhere, I've never seen so many at once.

I will get a picture of the Snout next sighting.
The monarch was laying eggs, found 13 eggs on July13, today I found 13 more. One plant has 6 eggs on it.

Walking the woodland trails of Field Station grounds when the Tree ID group spotted this Female Tawny Emperor. I originally thought it was a Hackberry but this was corrected on Badger Naturalist.

Sunny, 74 degrees, wind at approximately 8 mph.

Sunny, 77 degrees, wind at approximately 9 mph.

82° Sunny. 15 people attended. Everyone got to see Regal Fritillaries.

Lower 70's. Not many butterflies but lots of Dragon/Damselflies, Robber flies and a couple of Tiger Beetles.

Sighted sitting on a bush in the forested area leading towards the water.

Surprised to see a Little Yellow flying down the trail!

also one unidentified skipper

In the prairie west of Hwy C which is beautiful now!

On Rhubarb

Near 80 degrees and humid. Finally seeing Hairstreaks!

This was our 28th annual NABA Trempealeau Butterfly Count. We found 34 species, but only 164 individuals. Only a single hairstreak. Counters were Karl and Dorothy Legler and Al Sheldon. We observed for a total of 8.5 hours. Photo of the Bronze Copper by Dorothy, all others by Al Sheldon.

This general survey did not include counts so each species present will get a "1."

On American Hazelnut

1.3 hours. Although Regls were in several areas in the east half of the prairie, the big concenrtation was the southernmost hill that is west of the north-south draw that divides the site in half. This is our 21st year in a row monitoring Regal Fritillaries here. After several low Regal years here, this count has bounced upward into the range of counts when we found 30-50 Regals a year almost every year on this transect here during about 2001-2010. One of the Regals I saw was a female.

1.5 hours. 4 km walking on trails to the prairies and back, and 1.3 km on prairie noses.

More fun with Skippers!

Sunny, humid, 77 degrees. The Brown Butterfly I photographed was so faded and light,

Weather called for "overcast." Beautiful sunny day, though. I was there from 10:30 am to 4:15 pm.

Sedge obligates were out in abundance on common and swamp milkweed along Co. Rd. O. Saw four Baltimores on dogbane plant. Only a single Coral Hairstreak seen; abundant butterfly milkweed along Stolte Rd was attracting bumblebees, but no other hairstreaks. Gotta wait another week for hairstreaks?

Nectaring on Black-eyed Susans. Sunny, 1 pm

1.8 hours. We also found two Leadplant Moths, a prairie specialists we've surveyed for 24 years. This is our 26th straight year monitoring Regal Fritillaries during their main flight here. 80 Regals is below the recent average (like every Regal site but one that we know about this year) but still above the long-term median. Regals have increased a great deal here since 1992. We saw 78 male Regals and 2 of unknown gender.

This was our 15th year doing the Wisconsin portion of the Dubuque NABA Butterfly Count. In 5.5 hours we found 80 individuals of 23 species. Species is about average but individuals is 3rd lowest! High numbers of Wild Indigo Duskywing (7) and of Common Buckeye (3). A second Juniper Hairstreak was dead. The rare female Southern Dogface was new to the count.

Mostly cloudy until 4pm. The Robber fly had a sulphur.

Surveyed the remainder of our 25 Regal Fritillary long-term plots, and several others. Found Regals (27 males and one female) on 13 of the 14 plots surveyed, and Gray Coppers on 6 plots. Aphrodite Fritillaries and Regal Fritillaries are having below average years at most sites we've seen or heard about.

447 individuals was a fairly low number again this year. Skipper species were well represented with the Hobomok making a late appearance. 3 Appalachian Browns is a new record high for the count. An Aphrodite joined me briefly for a ride-along and one of the albino bucks from my neighborhood stopped long enough for a quick picture.

Number of species and number of individuals were way down for such a beautiful mostly sunny day.

Northern Broken-Dash is uncommon here in my experience.

Pretty much a perfect day for butterflying! The deerflies, though, are extreme.

Also saw 2 monarch caterpillars, 10 Painted Lady caterpillars, Red Admiral caterpillars and 1 Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar

The Dorcas Copper was a lifer!

77° Sunny. All 3 Giant Cats are gone. Hopefully
the larger 2 went into chrysalis. Marble sized hail two nights ago shredded the corn crop and probably killed the cat.s. Life goes on. Second Q.M. I have found out in the marsh. Black Dash was on Wild Burgamont near the garden.

We surveyed the 400+ milkweed plants in our yard and garden and found 21 eggs. That's good, but well below the record high of 67 one July day several years ago.

1:30-2:05pm. Mostly flew around overhead, but landed & fed a couple times on swamp milkweed in pollinator garden.

Good variety, but certainly no abundance on a day perfect for BFs.

Mourning Cloak enjoying some milkweed.