Barry Marts and I headed out to Nathaniel WMA located in Hardy county, WV in hopes of finding some left over Cobweb Skippers and perhaps a Dusted Skipper which, to my knowledge not ever been reported from that area. The Sun was out for the first couple of hours. We struck out on both of those skippers in that location but found a mother lode of American Coppers (31), many duskywings, some of which would remain Juvenal’s / Horace’s sp. There was a noticable shortage of Sulphurs continuing the trend of this spring. We flipped a coin whether to head north to Green Ridge SF or south to Reddish Knob in Pendleton county, WV. Green Ridge SF won the toss, however, a check of the current weather radar prompted us to overrule the coin toss and head south. No other peak rises higher than Reddish Knob (4,397 ft) as you go northeast until you get to the Adirondack mountains. It was the wise decision. We only had a couple of short rain showers and that was not until 3pm. Many species were found in a couple of power line cuts and we even saw a few male Falcate Orangetips near the peak. Silvery Blues were still on the wing. Several probable Appalachian Tiger Swallowtails were seen but never sat down for closer examination. We saw 21 species all told with my personal highlights being a male Cobweb Skipper and a pair of Brown Elfins (state lep) both found on Reddish Knob. The aggregate totals are below:
Silver-spotted Skipper 3 Northern Cloudywing 3 Dreamy Duskywing 22 Sleepy Duskywing 1 (female) Junvenal's Duskywing 4 Wild Indigo Duskywing 1 Cobweb Skipper 1 Pipevine Swallowtail 1 Eastern Tiger Swallowtail 8 Spicebush Swallowtail 2 Falcate Orangetip 3 Clouded Sulphur 14 Orange Sulphur 4 American Copper 31 Brown Elfin 2 Eastern Tailed-Blue 21 Silvery Blue 2 Pearl Crescent 12 Mourning Cloak 1 Red Admiral 1 American Lady 11
Glad you had a successful day.