Sun-Sentinel Article - Amethyst Hairstreak Sightings in Ft. Lauderdale

[Anne Kilmer]

forwarded to me by a friend, who notes that "Cordia globosa" has 
suffered a sea change. Spellcheck rules.
>  
> Rare butterfly causes stir in field
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> 
> By Neil Santaniello
> Staff Writer
> 
> April 24, 2004
> 
> Inside a private garden in Fort Lauderdale, four people on a butterfly 
> stakeout ring a white patio table. They keenly watch a blood berry bush 
> just a few feet away with cameras and binoculars at the ready.
> 
> Five days this month, in a tiny fluttering of tan-green, one of North 
> America's rarest butterflies has popped into this yard, landing at times 
> on the 3-foot-high blood berry -- "cordial globes" -- to sip nectar.
> 
> The surprise urban appearance of the tiny amethyst hairstreak, which 
> first flitted into entomologist Bob Pemberton's view April 2, has 
> stirred the local butterfly-watching world.
> 
> A single female with frayed wings turned up in June on Bahia Honda Key, 
> long enough to be caught in a shadowy photograph.
> 
> Before that, there had been no reliable reports of the amethyst 
> hairstreak, historically inhabiting only the southern tip of South 
> Florida in the United States, for nearly a decade, according to the 
> North American Butterfly Association.
> 
> "People have claimed they have seen one here or there, but there have 
> been no photographs or specimens," said David Fine, a Delray Beach 
> butterfly collector and Butterfly World worker who encountered the lone 
> Bahia Honda amethyst for 30 seconds before it flew up into a tree and 
> disappeared.
> 
> Pemberton's series of sightings -- the last on Saturday -- occurred in a 
> yard off Riverland Road, a location the Agricultural Research Service 
> scientist wants to keep secret so collectors don't try to nab the rare 
> butterflies, known to inhabit tree canopies more than ground cover.
> 
> He even managed to snap a clear digital picture of one of the surprise 
> visitors in all its minute and fragile beauty.
> 
> When he first saw one alight on a frost weed in the garden under 
> scrutiny early this month, Pemberton said he knew "it was something 
> special."
> 
> "I was startled by its green color. There aren't that many green 
> butterflies," he said.
> 
> One floated in on crisp-looking wings and seemed "fresh," according to 
> Pemberton. That suggests it had just left its chrysalis and was not a 
> vagrant knocked off course, said Rick Cech, a Manhattan banker and 
> author at work on the book Butterflies of the East Coast who joined the 
> stakeout this week.
> 
> "Sometimes you get a stray that just wanders," said Cech, one of four 
> butterfly watchers planted in front of the blood berry bush Monday. 
> "It's pretty clear there's a colony here."
> 
> Cech interrupted his vacation to catch a flight from New York City to 
> Fort Lauderdale to join a butterfly vigil for a day and a half, 
> including a nine-hour session Sunday.
> 
> Out of 250 East Coast butterflies, the amethyst hairstreak is one of 
> just two Cech said he's never laid eyes on. (The other is the disguised 
> hairstreak). He went home without even a fleeting glimpse, but said he 
> considered the roughly $650 trip worth the time and money.
> 
> "That's nature," he said. "It's always chancy; there's never a guarantee."
> 
> Glassberg said the amethyst, "to the best of anyone's knowledge," has 
> always been rather scarce in South Florida, seen mostly around Miami and 
> the Keys for years.
> 
> State and federal officials have not ranked it as threatened or 
> endangered, possibly because its population and range does not appear to 
> have shrunken dramatically over time.
> 
> Sightings occurred here and there in the 1970s but after that decade the 
> butterfly "basically disappeared," Cech said.
> 
> The butterflies roam some Caribbean islands but are uncommon in those 
> locations too, experts said.
> 
> Butterfly experts say the finding compares in importance to the 
> discovery in 1999 of rare, quarter-sized Miami Blue butterflies in the 
> Lower Keys.
> 
> "It's a very exciting find," said Jeffrey Glassberg, the butterfly 
> association president.
> 
> The amethyst's appearance in suburban Fort Lauderdale is "a huge deal," 
> said Alan Chin-Lee, a lepidopterist for Butterfly World who also visited 
> the Riverland Road garden butterfly vigil along with Alana Edwards, 
> co-founder of the Atala Chapter of the butterfly association.
> 
> Pemberton said Broward County Mosquito Control agreed to curtail 
> mosquito-spraying in the vicinity of the amethyst hairstreak sightings 
> because of the potential harm it could cause the rare creatures.
> 
> Florida's official state arthropod collection at the Division of Plant 
> Industry in Gainesville contains 22 dead amethyst hairstreaks, all 
> gathered in Miami, Pemberton said. One was snared in 1978 and another in 
> 1979 but the rest were netted in the 1930s, he said.
> 
> The Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., is home to 20 
> amethyst specimens culled from Florida -- 19 from the Miami area and one 
> from Fort Lauderdale. The latter must have been overlooked, said 
> Pemberton, because "the published literature [on the amethyst 
> hairstreak] does not even mention Fort Lauderdale."
> 
> Neil Santaniello can be reached at nsantaniello at sun-sentinel.com or 
> 561-243-6625.
> 
> Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel <http://www.sun-sentinel.com/>
> 




 
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