Mariposa Road by Robert Michael Pyle

Mariposa Road by Robert Michael Pyle

Author:Robert Michael Pyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books


2

Fandango

The 2008 Pacific Slope Section meeting of the Lepidopterists’ Society got under way at nine on Saturday, July 12, in Alturas, California. I’ve belonged to the society since 1959, and I wasn’t going to make the national meeting in Mississippi this year (been there . . .), but I hate to miss the small, intimate Pacific Slope gatherings. Most of the attendees were old friends, some for forty years. Though I’d been in town but seven hours, I got there on time, so Jerry Powell couldn’t make a crack. Several of the folks who’d already helped me, including Liam O’Brien from the green hairstreak walk in San Francisco, gave talks.

When it came time for my own contribution, a ramble on the Big Year to date, I was able to report some 280 species more than the handful I had when I’d met with much the same group at Berkeley in February. Later, Jerry told me that he hadn’t expected me to pursue this year with so much energy. That meant a lot to me, because Jerry is one of bluntest, most honest people I know. I doubt a word of false praise has ever passed his lips, which always seem to waver between a frown for fools and a hearty laugh. Jerry was my first editor, when I submitted callow pieces to the society’s journal in the sixties, and he has been the godfather of the Pacific Slope Branch for many years.

For the field trip to Cedar Pass in the nearby Warner Mountains, I rode with my old friend John Lane, donor of the Mendocino monarch tips. We saw a good many species, though none new. Ben Warner blues, the subspecies of Anna’s named from here, were the color of the California sky that summer: clear blue with a hint of white smoke. The next day I returned to the Warners on my own. I was checking roadside buckwheat, having just found my first California hairstreak, when a car stopped. It was Paul Opler and his wife, Evi Buckner, who had spotted Marsha in action. Paul wrote the eastern and western Peterson Field Guides for butterflies. He and I have collaborated on butterfly conservation for many years, and I leap at any chance to be in the field with him. Paul and Evi led me on a long, dusty road to a site for Lindsey’s skipper. We quickly found females of Hesperia lindseyi on thistles, and they went on their way, Montana-bound.

I watched the handsome gold and silver skipper for some time. Then, backtracking along the road on which we’d come, over Lassen Creek, I drove through clouds of snowberry checkerspots, all over the yarrow and even on St. John’s wort, which almost nothing ever visits. Buckwheat was plastered with two homonymic hairstreaks, S. behrii and C. g. barryi. Among them, but far fewer, showed two exciting coppers. The tailed copper is the only one besides Hermes to sport little tails on its hindwings, but larger, and its swirly pattern is unique.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.