Barry Marts and I took a more southern tragectory on Sunday and headed towards southeast Virginia. The orginal goal was to go to the Great Dismal Swamp in hopes of finding a couple species more common in that area and perhaps get lucky with some southern specialties. After a less than exciting report from Don Schwab (thanks Don!) we opted to go to the 155 acre Norfolk Botanical Gardens first and then possibly go onto the swamp. We never left the gardens. Butterflies were everywhere and so plentiful that the Monarch and Fiery Skippers were in the abundant category. In my opinion this location (which BTW contains 2,600 rose plants) has the best butterfly garden I’ve seen in the mid-atlantic region thus far. There is incredible diversity of plant species expertly maintained so there is always something in bloom all year round. After checking out the variety of Lantana’s around the visitors center we began our trek towards the butterfly garden. We stopped at every nectoring spot along the way and within 5 minutes found our first of seven Brazilian Skippers for the day. This heavily marked species is the 747 of the skipper fleet. Easily seats 500 parasites or more. Just a huge butterfly as far as skippers go. That was the first of two lifers for Barry (the other being Long-tailed Skipper). Upon reaching the gardens we spotted a female Dion Skipper still in decent shape. This was quickly followed by many Fiery Skippers and the first of our ten Ocola Skippers. Over the course of the next 6 hours we walked to some of the other areas of the park but always came back to the butterfly garden. Other notables seen were Cloudless Sulphurs, Sleepy Orange, a couple of Palamedes Swallowtails which would not still down for a photo (lifer for me) , Clouded Skippers and a Long-tailed Skipper. Twenty six species were seen. Barry now has seen a remarkable 125 species in the immediate region (NJ,PA,DE,MD,DC,WV) for the year. We are looking forward to the next time we visit this location, it was awesome.
** = Lifer * = First of Year Silver-spotted Skipper 3 *Long-tailed Skipper 1 Horace's Duskywing 2 Wild Indigo Duskywing 1 *Clouded Skipper 2 Least Skipper 3 Fiery Skipper 50+ Sachem 17 Dion Skipper 3 *Brazilian Skipper 7 Ocola Skipper 10 Black Swallowtail 5 Spicebush Swallowtail 3 **Palamedes Swallowtail 2 Cabbage White 12 Orange Sulphur 6 *Cloudless Sulphur 12 Sleepy Orange 8 Red-banded Hairstreak 4 Gray Hairstreak 2 Eastern Tailed-Blue 1 Monarch 85+ Variegated Fritillary 3 Pearl Crescent 5 Common Buckeye 17 Painted Lady 13
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I need to shadow you next summer. I am part of a monarch tagging program and you have seen many, many more than me this year.