Barry Marts, Sarah Smith, Mike Smith and yours truly took a trip to the southern regions of Florida making an initial side trip in the northern part of the state to Suwannee State Park in Suwannee County. At Suwannee we hoped to find and get a photo of Neamathla Skipper. Alas, it was not to be but we did see a probable candidate that got away. Consolation views and photos of Bachman’s Sparrow took its place. We then headed to south Florida and the FL Keys in hopes of finding some of our 6 target species (we ended up with 5). During the next few days we used Florida City as a staging point as we ventured anywhere from Coral Gables down to Big Pine Key which is about 25 miles from Key West. Temperatures and humidity were high (low 90’s and around 78 respectively) so staying hydrated and using bug spray where our main health concerns as we were staying out for hours at a time. Our main target was the endangered Schaus’ Swallowtail and newly colonized Amethyst Hairstreak. The Schaus ST is a Federally protected species whose adult life span is a mere 4-5 days. That’s such an amazing short time to do their thing. Add to that the never ending dangers of human intervention and mosquito spraying that occurs in other areas in south Florida and you can see that we must remain vigilant to ensure future generations get to see this butterfly. We traveled to Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park twice and during those trips we ran into other lepsters hoping to get views/photos of a Schaus’ ST. Browner looking with less yellow overall as compared to Giant Swallowtail the ones we saw only sat for a nanosecond before heading off again. I never did get a photo but we saw 6 during our two trips. We ran into another butterfly enthusiast who was there for a third year trying to get a photo. He was part of a survey party doing counts of the Swallowtail between May and July. Perhaps we’ll have more luck in the photo department next time. Also seen at Dagny was the plentiful Florida Purplewing (another lifer for all of us but Mike). Most of the Purplewings seemed very worn and on the backside of their adult phase.
Another day took us down to Big Pine Key were we found Amethyst and Fulvous Hairstreaks. The Amethyst’s have recently colonized on Big Pine Key. Let’s hope they stick around for many years to come. They are small as far as Hairsteak’s go and when sunset approaches, proceed with courtship displays at the tops of trees (we saw three topping a Pine Tree – photo below) occasionally landing to show their beautiful dark purple dorsal. A bonus bird on Big Pine Key was a couple of Antillean Nighthawks (photo below).
Our final lifer was found at the Fairchild Tropical Gardens which contains a stunning array of Orchids and other plants, scrubs, and trees. After 2 1/2 hours of searching we finally located a Pink-spot Sulphur. Until recently this species had been overlooked because of its similarity to Statira Sulphur or male Cloudless Sulphurs. It turns out that south Florida has been host for them for a while as subsequent searches through existing south Florida butterfly collections have found some Pink-spot’s attributed to Statira. I’m just glad one flew over to us and landed on the underside of a leaf for photos.
Other notables on the trip was Dina Yellow and Shiny Cowbird. All in all it was a gratifying, hot, humid, hard working trip that paid off. We will return!
Click on any image below to enlarge
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Breathtaking photos Matt!