Butterfly-a-Thon: notes from the road

by Robert M. Pyle© 2008
Robert Michael Pyle, a professional lepidopterist and a founder of the Xerces Society -- Defenders of Inveretebrates -- is on a year long travel project identifying butterfly species in the U.S. Bob is also a good writer, with several books published, and a fine lecturer with sense of humor.

We'll be following his journey from time to time, courtesy of the Xerces Society (see the Links page).

	Bob Pyle with his net (Marsha) at Ellwood Mesa next to Ellwood Mesa monarch grove and Coronado Butterfly Preserve, Goleta, California. Photo taken by Debra Piot, January 19, 2008.
	Female upperside of Martial's Hairstreak basking in the wind at Blowing Rocks Nature Conservancy Preserve on Jupiter Island, Florida. Perhaps the northernmost colony of this uncommon and uncommonly beautiful species. Photo by Alan Edwards.
	This is Sea Grape (Coccoloba urivera) . With leaves like this all around who needs paper? Or pants? This is not a fig, but it grows near Strangler fig, hostplant of the spectacular Ruddy Dagger wing.
	So I actually made it here - What a long, long way from Gray's Harbor. I have explored pinelands and palmettos, cypress swamps and sawgrass glades, butterfly gardens, parks, and roadsides, and greatly expanded the Species Count. Even so, cool, cloudy days, damp and windy weather has accompanied me even here, so numbers are not high, except for a great snowstorm of Southern and Checkered Whites in Avacado plantations, near Homestead, and sawgrass skippers thronging thistles in the glades. Pollination has been rife, insects everywhere - yet few mosquitoes.