With this exceptional warm weather for this time of year Barry Marts and I ventured to the NE area of Pocahontas County, WV dodging a few rain drops and finding partly sunny skies here and there. We were looking for ‘Appalachian’ Grizzle Skipper in WV which has crashed in the last 25 years due in large part to the Gypsy Moth spraying that has taken place in the mountains since the late 80’s. We struck out with the App Grizzled but found a noticeably large Azure at 3,100 ft. To me, my first reaction was… cool, Blue Copper because the large size reminded me of that butterfly from out west. This was along a road going through a hollow and drainage. Even though 3,100 ft sounds high it’s all relative as the ridge line was about 4,400 ft and the host, Black Cohosh’s avgerage mean elevation in the Appalachians is around 3,200 ft.
It wasn’t very cooperative but did sit briefly (back lit) for a couple of images. Dorsal coloration to my eye was pretty even sky-blue with perhaps the hind wing being touch lighter. Even though this is the the earliest I’ve seen C. neglectamajor it’s not out of the early date range. I’ve found that most timings weather dependent and vary year to year. We also saw about 15 West Virginia Whites during the trip.
Bird migration is in full swing now and many were seen/heard punctuated by this beautiful male Blackburian Warbler:
