Two trains running

Bill Yule droberts03 at snet.net
Mon Oct 7 00:07:10 EDT 2002


Hi all.
    It's fascinating isn't it, these immigrant butterflies showing up all along the coast, these Southerners invading our beaches like college kids on Spring Break.  Only it's Fall not Spring and they're more like pioneers striking out on some crazy doomed future, going north in the fall. Sachem, Ocola, Checkered White.  What chance do their offspring have? Offspring??  I watched a female Checkered White at Hammonassett inspect one "Poor-Man's-Pepper plant (Lepidium virginicum) after another on Saturday as if she wanted to oviposit. No flower, no nectar, just old beat up Peppergrass plants.  What was she thinking? The immigrants are everywhere now, every Nursery, every outdoor Garden Center, Zinnia patch, coastal Butterfly Garden, old forgotten Goldenrod field:  They've replaced the resident Skippers, these southern Sachems, Fieries, Ocolas. They've established a temporary beachhead on our beaches.  How quickly we become jaded too.  I casually point out a half dozen Sachems and Fiery Skippers to the strollers at Hammonasset when I myself had never seen one single Sachem three weeks ago.  And the other visitors are here too; Buckeyes, Cloudless Sulfur, Common Checkered Skipper and now the Checkered White. What is it?  The drought of Summer?  The exceptional warmth of the Fall?  Are the usual pioneers just making it a little farther north this year and in greater numbers?  I'm awed.  Have I missed it all these past years or is this new?  And the Monarchs moving, as they always have, in the opposite direction. I can't help thinking that it's like two coastal shipping lanes running in opposing directions. Two slow trains running, the southbound Monarch Express and the northbound Skipper Pioneer, bumping and tussling with each other at every whistlestop, juke-joint nectar garden along the way.  Fuel up and move out. Adios amigio. I'm awed.
    The Monarchs are crisp and fresh: Single minded and determined, following their own peculiar genetic information hiway to Mexican Winter sanctuary.  The Skippers, for the most part, are worn and haggard, blustering into a genetic deadend. Or have they left some legacy behind along the way that we just don't know about? Like all pioneers they strike out into the unknown, hoping for a better life, a place to call home.  They flee the place of their birth for the usual reasons; overcrowding, drought, a restless urge to wander.  Maybe some dim genetic memory trace of the advance and retreat of the glaciers over the millennium? I don't know...Oh I suppose I should be adult about it and say they are attempting to expand their home range, or they are being spatially displaced by population treads in their home range, or some other more official sounding pedantic explanation.  But I prefer to think of them as explorers, the Corps of Discovery of the butterfly world, Lewis and Clark heading into the unknown, rolling the dice on the road not taken.  It's silly I know. I can't help it though.  I hope you all are getting out to coast these days there's some good stuff going on. I know it's hard to get out, to find the time, to break the routine.  But these days pass quickly and winter is long.  Carpe diem.  As the poet might have said, "Get thee to a Zinnia patch!"

                                       Cheers,
                                                     Bill Yule
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