Bramble Hairstreak

[Mark Walker]

It's always great when you can zip away after working a half day, and still
manage to get some butterflying in.

Last Friday, March 5, was such a day.  It's cooled off here a bit in
Southern California, but if you drive fast enough you can beat the fog and
clouds that tend to hug the coastline.

There were fewer butterflies than a week ago, but at this time of the year
there's always at least one newcomer with each week.  This week it was
Callophrys affinis, a common but no less stunning little spring flyer with a
very green hindwing underside.  They flitter about, showing mostly the
chocolate brown topside, and then quickly perch in an instant - seemingly
disappearing - and are therefore easy to overlook.  One of my favorite
butterflies of California (but then there are so many), partly because of
the odd color and partly because of their early arrival.  You can still find
them occasionally in vacant urban lots that have escaped plowing, and are
still quite common in the chaparral areas of the Los Angeles basin.  I
remember seeing them frequently as a boy, in my explorations of the empty
fields of a more rural Los Alamitos (circa 1967).

Oh, to have the freedom of an eight year old - to wander fearlessly between
barbed wire and past No Trespassing signs.  Was it just my age, or were
people just a lot less worried about getting sued?

Mark Walker
Mission Viejo, CA