Saturday Hartford Courant

[Clay Taylor]

Hi all -

    Got a phone call on Monday from Steve Grant (nature writer emeritus of the Hartford Courant) - he was finishing an article on butterflies / butterfliers / and the upcoming publication of the CT Butterfly Atlas.   He needed to get a few photos of butterfliers in action, so we set up a meeting for Wednesday at Echo Farm State Park.   The article will appear in this Saturday's edition of the Hartford Courant.

    Jonathan,Gracie and I met the photographer at the front gate, and we all took a nice three-hour tour (the weather remained beautiful) of the park.  Butterflies seen were (in no particular order)

Black Swallowtail
Spicebush Swallowtail
Cabbage White
Orange Sulphur
American Copper
Summer Azure
Great Spangled Fritillary
Viceroy
Red Admiral
Northern Pearly-Eye
Little Wood-Satyr
Common Wood-Nymph
Crossline Skipper

    The dogbane, field thistle, and milkweed patches were pretty much past their prime, although there were some new Bull Thistles and some Cow Vetch that were drawing butterflies.  Eastern Meadowlark and Scarlet Tanagers were nice bird sightings, and a really handsome Black Racer was alongside the path on the way to the sandpit.   The kids munched constantly on ripe red raspberries, so they were fairly well behaved.

    The coolest sighting was a large dragonfly (it looked like some kind of clubtail) that had a Cabbage White in its clutches and was looking for some salad dressing to put on it.   I did get a few shots - I'll send you a copy if you are interested / can help with the ID.

Clay Taylor
ctaylor at att.net 




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/private/ctleps-l/attachments/20020725/c4a87002/attachment.html