I first got interested in butterflies when we first climbed Sauk Mountain two weeks ago. We were hiking and we took a break, and behind us we saw these people with butterfly nets. I am naturally interested in anything to do with insects, and when I saw the butterfly nets, I couldn't stop wondering about it. We waited for a few minutes before they caught up to us, and it turned out they were volunteers for the National Park's Cascade Butterfly Project. I observed them for the rest of the time, and the observer, Adriana, gave us her phone number to contact her. She let me borrow her net, and I caught my first butterfly, a Clodius Parnassian, (Parnassius Clodius), pictured below, that same day.
A week later, we got off to a bit of a late start to Sauk Mountain again, but it turned out Adriana and her family had as well. I soon caught up to them and we immediately started counting butterflies. The first butterfly we caught was an Anna's Blue, one of the most common butterflies in the cascades. In total we caught 56 Anna's Blues. We caught more blue's, such as one rare arctic blue, a Boisduval's blue, and observed 8 unidentified blues. The total amount of blues we caught was 68. We caught a few copper's, such as 2 Mariposa coppers, 13 purplish coppers, and 8 unidentified coppers. The coppers are relatively small, about the size of a nickel. The total amount of coppers we caught were 23. We took a quick break, and then continued counting butterflies.
There were lots of fritillaries, the little orange ones with the silvery spots on the ventral, (outside) part of their wings. We saw 47 unidentified Fritillaries, 4 Hydaspe Frits, and 17 Mormon Fritillaries, the one pictured above. We saw only a few parnassians, 4 unidentified and 3 Clodius Parnassians. We had also seen 14 unidentified butterflies. In total, we counted 178 individual living butterflies! We hope to see more butterflies again soon when we leave Saudi, but for now, Please stay tuned for more information on my website, www.birdsandturtles.com, for more info about my adventures.
