Valley on Cruise Control

Note: The Valley Ripple has been on hiatus the past  few days. I left the Valley on cruise control while I attended the annual convention of the Lepidopterist Society July 8-11. Lepidopterists from around the world attended, and to have such a significant event so close to home was a once in a lifetime opportunity for this novice. 

I met many interesting and colorful people and participated in three field trips to visit several butterfly-rich locations.

Some highlights of the four day gathering were: participating in an all night mothing field trip; collecting butterflies on the summit of Chumstick Mountain where one can observe and collect (if you are a “watcher” or a “collector”) 87 species of Washington State butterflies; attending an evening barbeque at Red Tail Ranch where I had the opportunity to talk to other lepidoptera enthusiasts; and listening to experts in the field discuss a variety of bug-related subjects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was fortunate enough to add three special butterflies to my collection: two Callophrys affinis washingtonia, the Washington hairstreak, a state butterfly rarely seen—at least for this collector. And I added another species to my collection of State butterflies, Heliopetes ericetorum, the Northern White Skipper, a butterfly I had never observed before. Netting this little beauty brought my collection of Washington State butterflies to over one hundred species.

On a more sober note, I was collecting at a puddling site in Swakane Canyon, Chelan County, on Saturday July 10, when a brushfire erupted in the Canyon. As of this morning the fire had burned over 12,000 acres and was only thirty per cent contained. A concern of mine was that the point of origin appeared to be in the vicinity of our collecting site, a lush riparian area where swallowtails throng to the mud for the minerals. Another party and I were at the site for an hour and a half and saw no sign of a fire, but as we exited the Canyon, we saw a plume of smoke up the valley. By the time I left, the fire had grown to over one hundred acres and smoke billowed up over the north hillside. On the way out of the valley I was stopped by a County Sheriff and asked to  give an accounting for my presence in Swakane His first question: “Did you have a campfire?” The cause of the fire is under investigation. I am currently monitoring the event and am anxious to learn how it started.

 

The four days in Leavenworth were stimulating and educational. I learned many new things: collecting techniques, species’ habitats and food sources, and that there are “moth” people who are as passionate about these creatures of the night as I am about the butterflies,their day counterparts. What I learned most from the four day seminar, however, was that even after collecting and studying lepidoptery for forty years, I still don’t know very much. There is a lot yet left to learn.

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