new friends | Winged Beauty Butterflies

Northern Metalmark Butterfly at rest photographed by Jeff Zablow at Lynx Prairie, OH

Imagine. You’re in southernmost Ohio, a handful of miles from Kentucky, there with new friends to find orchids, wildflowers and for me, butterflies. You’ve entered a very promising refuge, Lynx Prairie Reserve in Adams County. Somehow you get separated from the rest, and you wander alone, into a sizable meadow.

Without your friends, you just hope that you’ll happen onto your #1 goal, new butterflies that you’ve never seen before. As you work the periphery of that beautiful meadow, you spot a tiny butterfly, flying low and relatively slowly. It’s not a white or a yellow, not an Azure or a Blue . . . What can it be?

Moving fast, you reach this tiny flier, and Ooh My Goodness. it’s a Metalmark? Not a Little Metalmark, too large, too far north and much darker in color than that. Battle Stations! A NEW BUTTERFLY for me, a Northern Metalmark butterfly. In the next hour I found more than 50 of them, a fresh, healthy flight of them, all recently eclosed from their chrysalises. ‘Locally Rare’ in only 4 states, flying just a month or so.

I was ecstatic, I’d struck Jackpot! This life of mine has seen much, and yet, that find, those Northern Metalmarks thrilled me, left me that word again, ecstatic! That finding a new butterfly, kind of on my own, can do that for me, Wow!

I shall always Think Of and Thank Barbara Ann Case A”H (OBM”) for she enabled that trip, and others.

Jeff

I’m not totally sure why this song popped into my head, but it well sums up those many years of seeking butterflies, without you there with me. Having you there to together eyeball the terrain and vegetation for butterflies makes the quest for fresh, unique, new and rare butterflies so much more successful Talking while on trail does not cause them to flee, for they do not much hear human speech.

Those of you who are expert in plant ID are a big boon to finding butterflies, for being able to identify flowers, leaves, hostplants, fruit and all gives you advantage, for it helps anticipate what butterflies you may meet here and there. Barbara Ann Case A”H and Mike Barwick and Rose and Jerry Payne, Phil Delestrez, Nancy and John Crosby and Jerry Amerson all excelled when I was lucky enough to work trails with them.

2020 is slowly coming to a butterfly-seeking close, and 2021? I very, very much want to Bust-Out in this 2021. So many write of the disappointment of 2020 I’ve felt them too, and what tantalizes me? Several folks have nicely offered, without me asking, to show me destinations. Destinations! 2021, the Kid from Brooklyn (originally LOL) maybe meeting knowledgeable, good and sharing folks who know, and who guide us to potent destinations? WoW!

With former friends dismissive of what I (we?) do, and family no keen too (“Bugs!”), 2021, traveling to meet new friends who are steeped in knowledge of butterflies and where to find them, has my brain erupting in song, as this Rock ‘N Roll song, that somehow connects here, ‘I Want To Go Home, Where I Belong, I’m Just A . . . . ”

Shown? Nichol Road Trail, Raccoon Creek State Park, southwestern Pennsylvania, U.S.A.. If you’d been there, Oh My Goodness!

Jeff