GWC Prior Butterfly Stories 2005 continued ( Page 10 )

The first butterfly of the 2005 Season in Southeast Michigan--a Mourning Cloak--was seen by Martin Bialecki in the extreme southwestern corner of Washtenaw county on March 28 just after noon time. Later on the same day he saw several other butterflies all of them Eastern Commas in the same general area. Over the dates March 28, 29, and 30 I found three species of butterflies Eastern Comma, Mourning Cloak, and Gray Comma in various locations in and around Ann Arbor.

Today April 4, I saw my first two Cabbage Whites of the year. These Cabbage Whites were the first butterflies of the season to emerge from a chrysalis (the pupal stage of the butterfly). The other butterflies Eastern Comma, Mourning Cloak, and Gray Comma all overwinter as adult butterflies.

For the next couple weeks at least, it will be easy to find Mourning Cloaks and Eastern Commas in woodlots about Ann Arbor and larger forest fragments in the county. A couple of real nice places to look for these butterflies is on the nature trails at the Discovery Center in the Waterloo recreation area or the Nature Conservancy's Nan Weston Preserve in southwest Washtenaw county. As added bonus the rarer overwintering butterflies Gray Comma and Compton's Tortoise Shell may also present at either site.

To find any of these butterflies pick a sunny day with not too much wind and temperatures in the upper 50's or higher and then search the sunnier spots in the forest. Here overwinterers should be flying and basking in the sun to warm their bodies. Often they will land on a sunny patch of the trail where should be able to get excellent views of them.

The weather this butterfly season in April has been very unusual. For the first almost three weeks of the month, we had above average temperatures with one day peaking in the 80's. Soil Conditions were quite dry and we verged on the edge of a drought. Then the weather cooled radically over the weekend of April 23 to 24 and we received six to eight inches of snow in the central Washtenaw area with temperatures nearly 25 degrees below normal. By the next day Monday April 25, all the snow had melted and temperatures were back in the upper 50's.

Up to the sudden turn to the cold, butterflying had been relatively good in southeast Michigan this April. Thirteen species had been recorded before the snowstorm in southeast Michigan: Mourning Cloak, Eastern Comma, Gray Comma, Milbert's Tortoise Shell, Compton's Tortoise Shell, Red Admiral, American Painted Lady, Cabbage White, Spring Azure, Mustard White, Brown Elfin, Northern Azure, and Clouded Sulphur. The Clouded Sulphur sighting represented a record early date of April 15 for the species in our survey.

Other outstanding sightings included finding a Mustard White nectaring on Spring Beauty, seeing a Northern Azure and locating Brown Elfin at two Leatherleaf-Blueberry bogs( photo below of typical habitat ) nearby the Discovery Center in the Waterloo Recreation area of Washtenaw County.

Brown Elfins are tiny little butterflies which are hard to see but exquisitely patterned on their undersides. In our area of Michigan their larval hostplant appears to be Leatherleaf or possibly Blueberries that grow in bog habitats. In recent years these bog habitats have suffered from ecological degradation from lack of fall burning and intrusion of brush. Since these bogs are very special habitats they should receive some constructive conservation management from the Michigan DNR if we hope preserve them for the indefinite future.