One monarch, two satyrs, three question marks, and a comma: The annual butterfly count is on

by Pam Owen, Summer 2006

	Two tiger swallowtails sharing Joe Pye weed at Bruce Jones' property. Photo by Bruce Jones.

Every year some hearty folk venture into the summer heat to count monarchs, emperors, admirals, nymphs, satyrs, and American ladies. The counters are not students of the human race but rather of the insect order Lepidoptera—butterflies and moths.

Around July 4, the North American Butterfly Association starts a butterfly count throughout North America. Volunteer participants select a count area with a 15-mile diameter and conduct a one-day census of all butterflies sighted within that circle. The closest group to Rappahannock that joins in this count is Shenandoah National Park, which does its count in the Page County portion of the Park.

However, NABA's count is not the only one in Northern Virginia. Clarke County is now doing an annual count as part of its Natural Resources Mapping Project, the first countywide comprehensive survey of flora and fauna in Virginia. The protocol for this project calls for continual counts over the summer on small survey plots by volunteers around the county.

While butterflies have been studied for centuries, we still know little about many aspects of their lives, including the range of some species. As Smithsonian Conservation and Research Center Ecologist Bill McShea, who is overseeing the Clarke County project, put it, "we don't put radio collars on them."

Variegated fritillary on native aster. Photo by Bruce Jones.

Until science catches up with the invention of nano trackers or some other whiz-bang technology, Clarke County and NABA will have to do their counts the old-fashioned way—counting by sight. The Clarke County protocol calls for individual volunteers to do the count on their own properties seven times, for one hour each time, over an eight-week period, from July 9 through August 31. Each survey plot is 500 square meters (5,382 square feet), or 25 meters by 20 meters (about 94 feet by 70 feet), although the total area is more important than the dimensions, according to McShea. About 40 volunteers, mostly middle-school kids, did a great job with the Clarke County count last year, he said.

Why bother counting butterflies? Butterfly species have distinct food and habitat needs and will disappear if those needs are not met, so they are good indicators of the health of a variety of ecosystems. By monitoring populations over many years, scientists can see if they've grown, shrunk, or shifted. From that, they can determine what species need protection as well as learn more about the health of the whole ecosystem—what eats what, what lives where, the effects habitat and climate (and climate change) have on native species, and much more.

To learn more about the health of Rappahannock County's ecosystems, the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection has decided to tag onto Clarke County's butterfly count. With the hope of eventually expanding Clarke's butterfly count from the Piedmont to the Chesapeake Bay, McShea welcomed the Rappahannockers onboard. He offered to process Rappahannock's data and add it to Clarke's to get a more complete picture of butterfly populations in the northern Piedmont, and RappFLOW has offered to map the results.

To train for the count, eight members of RLEP's Biodiversity Task Force recently spent a couple of hours at Blandy Experimental Farm in Clarke County training with McShea and his research team. The training was simple and fun—look at slides of native butterflies to learn distinguishing characteristics among the species and then walk out to a nearby field to put the learning in action. Volunteers were armed with string and flags to mark off the area to be studied; instructions for collecting butterfly data; a butterfly survey sheet to mark down the number of each species counted; and a beginner's guide to identifying thirty-three of the most common native Virginia species.

Once the volunteers were in the field, the hunt was on! Enthusiastic cries of "monarch heading your way," and "is that an orange or a clouded sulfur?" were ricocheting across the field. As the trainees quickly learned, some butterflies, such as the tiger swallowtail, are large and languorous in their flight, and thus easy to identify, while others, such as the pearl crescent, are tiny and quick and call for identification, well, on the fly. McShea advised the volunteers that the first day of counting could be rough for beginners trying to identify the various species and count them, but that volunteers quickly become familiar with the species in their little survey patch and settle into the routine of the count.

On July 15, 2006, RLEP's Biodiversity Task Force hosted a very successful Butterfly Day, a public event at Bruce and Susan Jones' property to provide more information on native butterflies and the Rappahannock count. The event attracted over adults and children. Shenandoah Park Ranger Mary Willeford Bair, a Forest Health Biological Science Technician, gave a presentation on butterflies and how to identify common native species. She also talked about the count in Shenandoah National Park, which Bair initiated in 1997 and has coordinated every year since.

Getting a good look at a butterfly. Photo by Carl Zitzmann.

After Bair's presentation, Ruth Anna Stolk, coordinator of the Task Force's Butterfly Group, talked briefly about the Rappahannock count and how those who are interested can join in. Bair then led attendees through the Jones' naturalized fields to point out butterfly species. Since the Jones' have purposefully planted native plants that attract butterflies, plenty were on view—17 species were identified in about an hour.

Resource and butterfly identification materials available on this website include the Rappahannock Butterfly Checklist and Butterfly References.

For more information about the Rappahannock butterfly count, call 540-675-9989 or send an email to biodiversity@RLEP.org.

To learn more about native butterflies and counts, go to www.naba.org.