Caught that specimen

Paul Opler published my H. missippus record in his 1984 "Butterflies East of the Great Plains', but he annotated the wrong county on his species map. Harry Legrand has since corrected the record for NC.

I guess the greatest one that I nabbed was a Thysania zenobia in northern Illinois while suagring for catocalas. Walking up to that and capturing it sure was heartpounding. The combination of 'I can't believe I'm seeing this' and 'I had better just get it now before it's to late' and 'what if I miss?' were flying through my mind at the time.

I also had the pleasure of nabbing an A. odorata after missing one thirty-some years ago. It was in TN and not nearly as far north as the T. zenobia was, but was spectacular to see and catch. I hear these things are common in s. AZ, but when I was there, I saw none:( Oh well......maybe next year.

I keep having this interesting experience where I'm out collecting in some remote area at an odd time of the year and I find some Noctuid/Geometrid etc. that's considered rare (there is anywhere between 5-50 specimens in collections worldwide), so I collect as many as I can, and then I let some other collectors know, who go out and collect it, so then it's no longer rare, and I move on to some other taxa. Anyway, this happens to me almost every year.

It makes me wonder if there are really any truly rare species at all, or if they are just rarely collected. Obviously there has to be a breeding population somewhere to maintain the species.

I've collected my share of strays and aberrants as well, which are more of 'dumb luck' catches, nothing really once-in-a-lifetime though.

for me in order of importance to me are :

1. catching my first inachis io, a common lep but when seen through the eyes of a 9 year old truly spectacular, heart pounding moment and the reason I initially got hooked on entomology.

2. Seeing and catching lots and lots of iphiclides polalirius and papilio machaon on my first trip abroad to Northern Spain, you have to be British to understand the exitement of seeing machaon for the first time in the wild, they were freshly emerged too.

3. Seeing and capturing scores of charaxes jasius on my last visit to Spain, again the first time I have ever seen this stunning species, it was truly breathtaking and suprisingly easy to net for such a powerful flyer.

4. Being in a wood on the Isle of Wight one late june morning and seeing dozens of argynnis paphia and limenitis camilla on blackberry bushes in Combley Great Wood, I was so engrossed I am ashamed to admit that I did'nt even notice my heavily pregnant wife had slipped, she still moans about it 15 years later.

Oh, I forgot this one. Don't know why, but in 1970, I found a minor male Lucanus cervus at my garage light. We lived about 2.5 miles west of the Peoria Airport when I was growing up. At the time, I didn't know what it was, but later I did identify it. My belief is that it had been in the plane after being transferred there from someone's luggage, but amazingly had flown to our property after escaping from the plane. I was absolutely stunned when I found out what it was. I didn't report the record, since I wasn't sure if anyone would believe me ten years after finding it.
Jeff Prill

Story 2.
A few years ago we were invited on an expedition to inventory the “highest point” in Belize. The trip was actually full, but thanks to part of the ornithologists team backing out at the last minute, and the fact that we could actually pay our way, our team weaseled our way onto the trip.

FYI - Until just a few years ago, Victoria Peak was touted as the highest point in the country. Victoria Peak really is a peak that juts upward and looks the part of a mountain top. But recent work has demonstrated that in the rugged ridges that define the border between Toledo and Cayo districts, there are some long ridge lines that are about 100 meters taller. Because these are more like the high spots on a very rugged plateau, they don’t really look the part. Nor can you actually see anything that looks like the highest point in Belize from the inhabited portions of the country. But one site, known as Doyle’s Delight is now definitely the highest point in Belize and about a dozen biologists were asked to spend 10 days at the site.

Doyle’s Delight is deep in the Maya Mountains, and by mountain climbing standards, isn’t hard to get to. It’s a four day hike, up and 4 days back down to get to the ridge in question. The area is draped with very wet, tropical rain forest and the ridges are pretty steep. This is truly virgin forest, and no trails exist. So, by biologist standards, it’s impossible to hike into! But thanks to great organization in Belize, we used military transport to get there, and we had great Maya guides to support us (and make sure that the biologists didn’t accidently kill themselves). So, the choppers lifted us and way too much gear into the most remote spot in the country. We managed to arrive the day before a hurricane swept through the area, and while we were under a distant arm of the storm for just one night, it set the tone of our time up there – it was very wet and rainy for the entire trip. At this altitude – a not very high 1,100m – we were in an area where warm, moist Caribbean breezes sweep upward and turn to rain virtually every day.

So, we cut and flagged trails into the forest in the mist and rain. The rest of the team was pretty unaffected by the rain. Mycologists were actually pretty pleased, and the mushrooms were really fresh. Birds still flew into the mist nets. Frogs called lustily at night. And the botanical team had lush vegetation to sample regardless of the weather. But the butterflies weren’t having anything to do with us. Every night it rained. Every morning, it was pretty clear, but by the time things warmed up and dried off, the clouds would start to re-form. And even when it was great weather, the habitat worked against us. This area is mature forest and other than the recently cleared landing area, there was no disturbance. The flowers and openings that lepidopterists take for granted were simply nonexistent! Some days we didn’t collect at all. And on good days, we managed to work around 4 hours or so. In 10 days, two collectors managed to net less than 200 specimens total – pretty depressing.

But what we missed in quantity, we made up for in quality. We picked up 10 species that had never been recorded from the country. And two of these were big surprises – at least to me. On one of the trails we blazed down a ridgeline, we found a small area were all the trees had recently died. As best as we could figure, a lightning strike must have vaporized moisture in the peaty soil, killing a circular stand of trees about 20 meters across. This was one of the few areas where there was a break in the canopy that butterflies would use to come down to us. More importantly, a few of the trees were still leaking sap, and we could see butterflies – especially Agrias aedon rodriguezi feeding in the tops of these dead snags. But there was another, very deep blue Prepona up there as well. But they would not come down close enough for us to get a good look. And our banana bait did nothing – the butterflies would not drop down to extension net level (we had 18 foot net handles with us). Every day, one of us would spend 1-2 hours at that spot waiting and watching and catching a few other bugs. Then we made a discovery – the friction locks on my friend’s net handle were bright blue. And if he swung his net around sometimes the Agrias or Prepona would swoop down to take a look. Literally, on the last three days we were up there, we managed to get 4 of those bugs to land low enough that we could collect them. We ended up with one Agrias and three male Prepona deiphile diaziana – otherwise known from a small region of Veracruz and adjacent Chiapas. We saw some females, but they never came down from the dead tree tops. No one suspected that this bug would be in Belize.

That was pretty cool, but as we were packing up our gear to leave, Pete showed me an “odd satyr” that he found in the preservative of one of his beetle traps. It wasn’t a satyr, but it was was odd! Although it is a very crappy specimen, this is the only record I’m aware of, of Caerois gerdrudtus (Morphinae) north of Costa Rica. Pretty cool and a major range extension!