2017 September 24

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:   And I thought the butterfly season was over!  Not a bit of it!   Bill Savale and I went to McIntyre Reservoir today and we saw six species there.  Several Cabbage Whites, of course.  A male and a female Purplish Copper in perfect brand-new condition.   A pristine fresh Painted Lady, and a not-so-fresh American Lady.  (The latter is a real rarity in our area, and even in British Columbia.)  Two sulphurs.  One was a deep rich orange and was clearly an Orange Sulphur. The other was a much paler yellow, similar to the few of that colour that we saw on the VNHS September Butterfly Walk.  I am pretty well convinced now that these are Clouded Sulphurs.  I had a good look at one of them.  It was a male (no yellow spots within the terminal band).  That rules out the possibility that it was a female Orange Sulphur, and also rules out the possibility that it was a white (helice) form of a female of any sulphur.  The width of the black terminal band appeared to be obviously narrow compared with that of an Orange Sulphur.  While I am pretty-well convinced that it was a Clouded Sulphur, it would still be of great interest if someone could obtain (or if someone already has obtained) a photograph of one of these paler sulphurs.  One feature of interest to look at would be the row of dark subterminal spots on the underside of the forewing.  It is a pity that we cannot investigate the large alfalfa patches in the Forbidden Field.  There might even be caterpillars there.