FW: Saturday trip to Otay Mountain

Michael Klein keps2 at flite-tours.com
Sun Feb 24 15:38:49 EST 2002



-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Klein [mailto:keps2 at flite-tours.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 12:31 PM
To: SoWestLep at yahoogroups.com; owner-leps-l at lists.yale.edu
Subject: Saturday trip to Otay Mountain

Here is my account of a field trip I did yesterday to Otay Mountain.  Good
day for lepping.

A great day to go out and look for early season leps.  After a Friday of mid
to upper 90's and 10% humidity, this was a welcome change.  Joining me in
the field was Claude Edwards, David Faulkner, Kathleen McGregor and Jennifer
Starling.  The day started off a bit cloudy with temps in the low 60's. By
the afternoon there was a westerly breeze up to 10mph and in the mid-70's.

The purpose for the days trip was to look for and photo-document Thorne's
Hairstreak (Callophyrs gryneus thornei) ** still believe it should be
Mitoura thornei.  Otay Mountain is the only place in the U.S. to find these
guys.  Since David and I teach this butterfly in our annual Sensitive
Butterfly class we wanted to get some current pictures and hopefully come
back at other times to get pictures of larvae and pupa and possibly eggs.

There was not much blooming since San Diego is presently under its driest
year on record, not even 2 inches record since July 1st.  The major blooming
plant was deerweed (Lotus scoparius).  There were token buckwheat and
erodium but the insect activity was on the deerweed.  David took us a to a
nice stand of Tecate Cypress (Cupressus forbesi), Thorne's only host plant
and began searching the trees.  We found one Thorne's on some brush about 20
feet away from the cypress.  We all got excited and David said that the
first person to get its camera out gets to take the first picture.  Of
course don't give me a challenge like that.  I whipped out my camera and was
ready to shoot within 5 seconds.  Well the butterfly was very cooperative
until I got about 2 inches away and he decided he didn't want to be
photographed.  Away he flew.  To see five of us jumping and pointing through
scrub looked like something that could win first prize on America's Funniest
Video.  David moved in for a shot and again this critter decided he was not
ready for his Mr. DeMill shot.  We followed him for about 10 minutes and
then lost him.  Well off to look for more.  David and Claude happened to see
2 more Thorne's but reported they were not successful in getting the elusive
picture.

By the time we got through the stand of cypress, David wanted to go up a
fairly steep hill and see what was at the top.  Again, we were not
disappointed with the lep and other insect activity at the top in a stand of
deerweed.  Not only did we have Thorne's, but we had silvery blue, brown
elfin, bramble hairstreak, anise swallowtail and gray hairstreak.  There
were also foraging Crouch's bumblebees, some leafcutter and digger bees and
some opportunistic crab and jumping spiders.

We decided to come off the hill about 1:30pm to head back to the cars.  On
the way down we had Behr's metalmark, Sara orangetip, more bramble
hairstreaks and silvery blues.  We also had 2 young San Diego coast horned
lizards that were quite reddish.

By the way, we did end up getting pictures of Thorne's between me, Claude
and David.

Here is the lep list for the day with numbers:
Papilio zelicaon - 2
Papilio rutulus - 1
Anthocharis sara - 1
Callophyrs dumetorum perplexa - 25
Callophyrs augustinus - 15
Callophyrs grynuea thornei (Mitoura thornei) - 9
Strymon melinus - 1
Glaucophsyche lygdamus australis - 9
Apodemia mormo virgulti - 4
Nymphalis antiopa - 1
Erynnis funeralis - 3
Arctiid sp. (wooly bear) +2,000 2nd through 4th instars
Tortricid sp. - 1 (David has this and he said it was new for him)
Pyralid sp. - 1 (I saw it fly out of some buckwheat and into another one but
could not photograph it)

Michael Klein
San Diego


 
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