Alamos Trip Day 8

Clay Taylor CTaylor at worldnet.att.net
Mon Oct 7 09:02:51 EDT 2002


Mike -

    I'm sorry to break the news to you, but there is No Known Cure for MWF -
it will remain with you until you go to that Great Collection In The Sky.
However, it can go into remission and remain undetected for many years only
to flare up later.  Thankfully, MWF by itself is not fatal, and it in fact
serves a good purpose to mankind by providing relief from interminable
Monarchs/collecting vs. watching/pesticides threads on Leps-L.

Keep up the good work,

Clay Taylor
Moodus, CT
ctaylor at att.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Klein" <keps2 at flite-tours.com>
To: "Leps-L" <leps-l at lists.yale.edu>; "SoWestLep"
<SoWestLep at yahoogroups.com>; "TILS" <TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2002 11:51 AM
Subject: Alamos Trip Day 8


> 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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