Alamos Trip Day 8

[Michael Klein]

This is the last on my day trips in Alamos.  I want to thank all of you who
have commented and provided feedback on some of my lep findings.  This is
the first time I have ever done a writing like this but I believe it had to
do with the Mark Walker Fever.  Now that I am over it I will get back to my
regular writing style.

Michael Klein
San Diego

Alamos day 8 - Well this is my last day.  We would be leaving on a 5pm
flight from Cuiadad Obregon to Hermosillo then onto to Tucson.  David wanted
to do some birding at an arroyo south of town and he invited us to join him.
Still after-glowing from the previous day, I did not think anything could
top it.  Well this day was going to have its moments too.  We went to Arroyo
El Chalaton and then onto the trail called Sierra de Alamos Summit Trail.
The morning started off humid but comfortable.  We entered a fairly dense
trail to access the Arroyo.  This area was cracker heaven.  Between gray
(Hamadryas februa ferentina) and glaucous (Hamadryas glauconome grisea)
crackers we had well over three dozen.  That was the first thirty minutes of
hiking.  Also within this dense area were plenty of black witch moths
(Ascalapha odorata).  We came into a small opening within the trail and
heard Mexican parrotlets.  We waited a few minutes and three showed up in
the trees above us.  Lovely almost lime-green birds with a small amount of
turquoise blue on their wings.  We watched them for a few minutes when a
females and begging young yellow grosbeak showed up.  Chalk up two new birds
for me.  I was looking at some insect activity on some of the organ pipe
cactus when a HUGE sphecid (thread-waist) wasp landed on one of the cactus
fruit.  This thing appeared larger than Pepsis (tarantula) wasps.  It could
easily wrap its legs around the fruit and carry it.  I was thinking that
this one wasp I was not about to tangle with.

Up the trail we continued to a large opening with boulders all around us.
Mexican bird-of-paradise were loaded with butterflies.  I got a very good
picture of the dorsal of a dingy purplewing (Eunica monima).  Some of the
other butterflies in the clearing were white-angled sulfur (Anteos chlorinde
nivifera), cloudless sulfur (Phoebis sennae marcellina), southern dogface
(Zerene cesonia), Boisduval's yellow (Eurema boisduvaliana), gulf fritillary
(Agraulis vanillae incarnata), bordered patch (Chlosyne lacinia crocale),
elf (Microtia elva), tropical leafwing (Anaea aidea troglodyta), coyote
cloudywing (Achelarus  toxeus), emorsa spurwing (Antigonus emorsa), common
sootywing (Pholisora catillus), and prenda roadside-skipper (Amblyscirtes
tolteca prenda).  I also had what looked like a roadside skipper very
similar to moon-marked skipper (Atrytonopsis lunus).  Unfortunatley I could
not get close enough for a picture for posting to ID it.  Does anyone know
the status of this skipper here?

We continued up into the arroyo and came to another clearing where we had
great looks again at Mexican parrotlets, happy and Sinaloan wrens, yellow
grosbeak and a male violet-crowned hummingbird.  A California archilestes
damselfly (ID by Rosser Garrison) was perched along the water's edge
actively hunting.  There was a small clearing next to the creek where I had
some good butterfly activity.  Mostly Mexican bird-of-paradise were the
choice of nectar.  I had some good photo shots of white-angled sulfur
(Anteos chlorinde nivifera), Arizona metalmark (Calephelis arizonensis
sinaloensis), and poeas metalmark (Emesis poeas).  A stray gray hairstreak
(Strymon melinus franki) would come through disrupting the feeding of the
other butterflies.  But I guess that's what bullies do.  The were the
usually array of long-tail skippers along with a white-striped long-tail
(Chioides catillus albofasciatus), which I do not believe we had seen
previously.

After spending a good hour here, we continued off of the arroyo onto the
trail to the summit of Mount Alamos.  Due to dense forest the butterfly
activity diminished except for Boisduval's yellows (Eurema boisduvaliana),
sleepy oranges (Eurema nicippe), tiny checkerspots (Dymasia dymas chara),
and elfs (Microtia elva).  We did encounter a ceraunus blue (Hemiargus
ceraunus gyas), marine blue (Leptotes marina), and Elada checkerspot (Texola
elada perse) periodically.  After about an hour we could see a significant
difference in the vegetation with the beginnings of some oaks.  We were at
about 700 meters in elevation with about another three hours to the top and
another 1,000 meters to climb.  It was getting on 12pm by now and we needed
to get down from the mountain and back to Solipaso to shower and pack.  So,
we headed back down.  David and Claude were complaining about the humidity.
Today seemed more uncomfortable than any day before.  Yet, I was sweating a
lot and not bothered by it.  So I guess it took me a week to get acclimated
to the region.  As we passed some of our earlier spots, the butterflies were
the same, just more of them.  Even the cracker section seemed very busy.

We got back to Solipaso, showered, had some lunch and waited until about
3:30pm for David to drop us off at Cuiadad Obregon airport.  The trip home
was pretty much uneventful except for the intense smell of cattle at
Hermosillo (if you know what I mean).

This was by far the best trip I have ever been on.  I look forward to going
back sometime.  In fact David has offered to me to be a contact person, sort
of like Hank and Priscilla Brodkin, to put together future trips to Alamos.
If there is an interest, I am willing to take lead on getting some trips to
Alamos for three of four days.  As like what Hank has done I can do seasons
depending on the interest.  Again, be aware Labor Day weekend was not the
height of the butterfly or bird season.  Butterflies seem to peak in
diversity at the end of September through the third week of October.
Although, as with any region, there are seasonal specialties.



 
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