Guilford butterfly sightings

Clay Taylor ctaylor at att.net
Tue Aug 19 09:44:02 EDT 2008


All - 

Years ago, Will Stoddard told me a trick that lepidopterists used to lure Hacks down from high perches (most likely in order to net and collect them, but I'm concerned with the HOW, not the WHY).

Get a fly rod (the longer the better - most trout rods are 9 feet long, some are longer).   Fashion up a little paper butterfly about the right size and shape, and color it to look like another Hack.     Attach it securely to the end of the flyline leader, so you can swing it back and forth in slow arcs.

Go to your favorite Hack tree / grove, or to wherever you think one might be lurking, feed out about 8 - 10 feet of line, and make broad, sweeping motions with the fly rod, making the false butterfly "patrol" the area.   If there is another Hack or Tawny in the area, it will give chase, and you can gradually lower the rod tip to bring the false butterfly to the ground, and the resident butterfly will follow it down and alight nearby.

I never did get around to trying this technique, but it certainly sounds plausible.

Clay Taylor
Calallen, TX (Corpus Christi)
ctaylor at att.net 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Epmanshell at aol.com 
  To: ctleps-l at lists.yale.edu 
  Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 8:58 PM
  Subject: Re: Guilford butterfly sightings


  On Monday, 8/18, I visited a couple of the sites I will be covering on Saturday's field trip.

  I started out a Chaffinch Island Park where I found a total of 8 species of butterflies including an American Snout and a very fresh Hackberry Emperor.

  Both the Snout and the Emperor were found in their traditional site.

  While the American Snout was very visible once it finally showed up in the Hackberry trees, the Hackberry Emperor was very difficult to find.  The Hackberry Emperor was found by another butterflier at 1:45 PM, just as I was arriving at the park.  It took me 1 1/2 hours to find it myself. (I can be persistent.)

  On the way home, I stopped at Jared Elliot Preserve where I found a total of 11 species of butterflies including an American Snout that was nectaring on the New York Ironweed.

  Lenny Brown
  Wallingford





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