San Diego Field Day

[Michael Klein]

I am bringing folks up to date on some sightings in San Diego in case anyone
is making plans on coming out this way.

On Friday the 16th of May I was in the field with Daniel Marschalek of the
California Department of Fish and Game, Dr. Martha Heath and Kojiro Shiraiwa
(Koshi).  We went to the Crestridge Ecological Reserve for a few hours.  The
purpose of the visit was for Daniel.  He is a student at San Diego State
working on his Master's Degree.  He has decided to do some research on my
favorite butterfly, Lycaena hermes (Hermes Copper).  Daniel has selected a
few locations within the County to perform his research and since Crestridge
is a Reserve, no collecting is allowed, unless you give up your 'pound of
flesh' and most probably more than that.  We were performing pre-flight
surveys looking for larvae.  One of his tests is to look for parasitoids.
We found a few shrubs with evidence of larval eating but was not successful
in finding anything.  To our surprise we found 7 freshly emerged male
Hermes.  Per Ken Davenport we set a new early record by 4 days which was set
by Fred Thorne in 1934.  I guess a regular winter rainy season helps a lot.
I will continue to monitor the Crestridge site and 4 other sites in San
Diego to see if this is not an anomaly.  Last year I had only 1 butterfly
the entire season on Crestridge where the previous year I had over 1,000.
Hopefully we will have a good hermes season.

We had a total of 17 species for the day (3 hours of field time)
Pontia protodice - 30+
Pieris rapae - 1 female
Anthocharis sara sara - 12 males, 5 females (3 yellow form)
Colias eurytheme - 2
Lycaena hermes - 7 males **** early record for state
Leptotes marina - 2 males
Everes amyntula - 1 male
Apodemia virgulti - 2 males, 1 female (attempting to oviposit on buckwheat)
Chlosyne gabbii - 1
Nymphalis antiopa - 1
Vanessa virginiensis - 1
Vanessa cardui - 5
Vanessa annabella - 2
Junonia coenia grisea - 20+
Adelpha bredowii californica - 2
Eyrinnis funeralis - 6 and at least 1 female
Ochlodes agricola - 6 males

Then today, I went up into the mountains by the community of Guatay to look
for Arrowhead blue (Glaucopsyche piasus).  The lupines are in bloom all over
the meadows so, I wanted to test my luck.  Well I was not disappointed I had
over 30 of them and even got a decent picture of a mating pair.  In 2 hours
within an area of 30 X 50 feet I had the following:

Pontia protodice - 3
Anthocharos sara sara - 6 males, 3 females all yellow form
Celistrina ladon echo - 3 males
Glaucopsyche piasus - 30+
Lycaeides melissa paradoxa - 3 males
Icaricia icaroides evius - 2 males
Icaricia acmon acmon - 4 males
Icaricia lupini monticola - 1 male
Speyeria callippe comstocki - 1
Chlosyne gabbii - 3
Junonia coenia grisea - 8 and at least 1 female and 1 male photographed
mating

All in all it looks like the mountains could have a fairly decent season.

Michael Klein
San Diego


 
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