alien butterfly in my garden

[James Kruse]

A friend in Madison, Wisconsin has a Heliconius charitonius (Zebra
butterfly) that was caught within the city limits of Madison several years
ago. This butterfly has strayed as far north as SW Illinois in the past, but
he caught it about 2 blocks from the local butterfly house that did have H.
charitonius in it at the time. I've been in this butterfly house, and it has
pretty good butterfly security. There are double doors to the outside, then
a foyer and gift shop, then another set of doors into the butterfly area.
However, I suspect there is a crack somewhere rather than this being a real
stray. 

I like Ken Philip's idea of punching a _small_ (smaller than paper puncher)
circular hole in one of the hindwings (in the discal cell or something) for
all live butterflies brought outside their normal range (including school
reared Vanessa in Fairbanks, AK, for example). I suppose that might "ruin" a
few butterfly house pictures, but if folks had the reasons properly
explained to them (and they cared about bioinventories and their importance)
they may be more accepting of it.

A Zebra (of any type) that naturally found its way to Wisconsin would be a
significant find! Too bad there is a lot of doubt about the one that was
found.

Regards,
James J. Kruse, Ph.D.
Curator of Entomology
University of Alaska Museum
907 Yukon Drive
Fairbanks, AK, USA 99775-6960
tel 907.474.5579
fax 907.474.1987
http://www.uaf.edu/museum/ento




on 8/13/01 10:49 AM, Charles V. Covell at covell at louisville.edu wrote:

> Yesterday, Sunday Aug. 12, I went out of the house to check the garden for my
> periodic count of butterfly species.  There on a peony leaf stood what turned
> out to be a _Heliconius ismenius_, too far out of its range in Central to
> South America to be a migrant.  Howver, about 3 miles from our house the
> Louisville Zoo is operating a butterfly house this summer, Martin Feather in
> charge.  Some coincidence that this Heliconiine flew that far from its point
> of escape at the zoo to land in the back yard of just about the only person in
> Louisville, KY beside Martin who would note this as an alien.  Kind of makes
> me wonder how many escapees there are over there!  Anyone else have or know
> about a similar occurrence?  Cheers, Charlie
> 
> 
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