Sighting for July 20, 2013

This area (40.42916667, -75.01972222) was the second area Jim Springer and I covered, working with the Hunterdon Land Trust (HLT) group in the Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Count Circle. It is the larger of the two properties we observed and we dedicated an hour and a quarter to walking the edges of several fields that were farm fields until recently. In the parking area, there was an old-field succession that had been planted in Timothy grass in 2012. Jim pointed out to the group that the abundance of Timothy grass remaining would make this a prime location for European skippers (though we are about 3 weeks to a month late) and it would be good to check the location next year in early June. We split the group at the halfway point, I split off to cover the less productive areas while sending the rest of the group to the fields I did not cover last year, that looked more interesting this year. There were several stands of milkweed, but I could not find a single monarch caterpillar. I did, however find a very cooperative Juniper Hairstreak and Jim found a Broad-wing skipper (two of the seven NABA had targeted as missing photos for Hunterdon County after 2000. The extra people helped to find more butterflies than we had here last year and a better diversity.