Joann Merritt's Essays

Butterfly Walks Are Our Game - Midnats Is Our Name
June, 1992

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, and an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much”. Still fewer people know how to take a Butterfly walk. In addition to Emerson’s instructions MIDNATS need to take special note of flowers, weeds, shrubs and trees and the butterflies that use these plants. Correctly identified eggs, caterpillars and chrysalides may be added to our 4th of July Butterfly Count total. The following are examples of plants and butterflies that I have observed.

While looking at a lamb’s quarter plant I was wondering why it is so named when I saw a Sootywing Skipper investigating the leaves. I knew lamb’s quarter was a host plant for this skipper species so I remained absolutely still for fear of disturbing her. I was so intent on watching that I allowed two mosquitoes to bite me, but eventually my knees betrayed me and I had to stand up. I observed her deposit one flat orange egg at a time on the top side of individual leaves. These eggs hatched into caterpillars resembling green inchworms with a black head. They feed on the leaves at night, then make a tent in which to rest during the day by silking leaves together. I didn’t find the chrysalis but one day there was a Sootywing Skipper flying inside the observation module we had placed over the plant. If not confined caterpillars may wander off to pupate some distance away from the host plant.

Purple Texas Thistles are the host plants for Painted Ladies and American Ladies. A field guide will show the difference in the caterpillars and chrysalides. We did not see the eggs but watched a Painted Lady caterpillar spin a web around a spine-tipped leaf and feed on it inside this tent-like structure. The droppings, or frass, collected at the bottom of this web - at least the leaf litter was bagged! Seven Ladies fed and hatched on this single thistle plant within the safety of our observation module.

Sunflowers and cowpen daisies are very common native plants. If you recognize them look on the underside of their leaves where the Bordered Patch lays mounds of yellow eggs which hatch into black and orange bristled caterpillars. Learn the several species of milkweeds in Midland which are used by the Monarch and Queen butterflies. Their eggs and chrysalides are identical and their caterpillars are very similar, so check your field guide closely. Willow trees that grow around The Pits, as well as other willow species, are the choice of Viceroys whose eggs are laid singly on the top-tip of a leaf. Western Peppergrass that grows abundantly at Crawford’s Ridge hosts the Checkered White. Their green caterpillars can strip a peppergrass plant of its small leaves in a short time.