Sighting for July 23, 2013

I had checked this area (40.342090, -74.941403) out last year to see whether there might have been some chance for Sleepy orange butterflies at the same latitude as the Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, but across the Delaware River in NJ. There is a large area of old-field lands that had a decent amount of milkweed and dogbane, among other species of nectar plants in these fields, but there were few butterflies when Jim Springer and I checked it out last year. This year, a great deal more vegetation is in the northern end of the fields, but the ring of trees surrounding the fields (and/or a mowing) has resulted in later-blooming milkweed and dogbane in the southern portion of the field, supporting a large number of big butterflies. I spent an hour and a half walking around the northern portion of the field and saw a lot of butterflies.