Tiger Swallowtails of NY: Finger Lakes, Part II

[eurytides]

I am in New Brunswick right now. Peak canadensis season it would seem. Saw several driving today and even hit one. None captured. No ova located. The hunt continues.

[Chuck]

I am in New Brunswick right now. Peak canadensis season it would seem. Saw several driving today and even hit one. None captured. No ova located. The hunt continues.

I'm so envious! I'd love to see that area some day.

[Chuck]

30June2023
25C mostly cloudy; sun totally blocked out by smoke from the Canadian fires

Nothing. Went south 30 minutes to a place I spotted last year with stands of milkweed, but the milkweed was 1% blooming. Saw no Tigers.

[Paul K]

I am in New Brunswick right now. Peak canadensis season it would seem. Saw several driving today and even hit one. None captured. No ova located. The hunt continues.

Did you find Papilio brevicauda on your trip?

[eurytides]

No brevicauda, very frustrating. I went to 3 dunes, perfect habitat, abundant food plant, but no eggs, larvae, empty eggshells, or evidence of leaf damage from caterpillars. I am not bad at locating eggs/caterpillars. In fact, I think I am pretty good at this. However, I couldn’t find anything this time.

[Paul K]

No brevicauda, very frustrating. I went to 3 dunes, perfect habitat, abundant food plant, but no eggs, larvae, empty eggshells, or evidence of leaf damage from caterpillars. I am not bad at locating eggs/caterpillars. In fact, I think I am pretty good at this. However, I couldn’t find anything this time.

I suppose should be a good time to find adults? I know you are very good to fInd early stages.
I am consider to go North next weekend to look for Papilio machaon

[eurytides]

Good luck Paul. Are you going to Moosonee?

[Paul K]

Good luck Paul. Are you going to Moosonee?

No, I don’t want to take train.
I was thinking of Fraserdale, there is a road 634 going north of Hwy 11. Try to find them along that road.
There is one record near Fraserdale.
The problem is I have only 3 days for that and out of these 2 days of driving so only one day for collecting.
If the weather be no good or smoke from forest fires then the whole trip would be for nothing.

[Chuck]

01july23: drove around the Lake Ontario shore in Ontario County; looked at patches of blooming milkweed. Zero sighted.
02, 03 july23: pouring rain.

05july 23: partly cloudy, 28 in morning, 31 in afternoon....

Went to Ithaca to the place where one year and three days ago the Tigers were everywhere on the milkweed. However, at 0930 half the hillside was still in shade, and that's the side with the milkweed. One tiger spotted flying high and fast. This was a waste, I got soaking wet from the dew. Coming off the mountain and driving, I spotted on on the roadside on milkweed and grabbed it.

So I headed 20 minutes NE to a location to look for a skipper for Dr. Hyatt. Nothing. ~10 days early.

My two target sites yielded zero.

Now noon, headed to a hill 35 minutes South. Poked around the base of the "mountain" here and there, saw a few Tigers flying fast. On a whim I turned onto a dirt road along the base of the hill in Cortland Co....ETA I just realized I printed all the damned labels with the wrong county.

Suddenly a cloud of yellow! I slammed the truck into park and exited as it was skidding to a halt. There were a half dozen or so Tigers flying about, chasing each other. I grabbed one quickly, then three more over the next 20 minutes. There were puddles about, so I assumed I'd scared them up, after which they seemed more interested in fighting than puddling.

I continued down the dirt road to the short end, where it was full canopy shade. I turned around, saw one, jumped out and grabbed it. Then I saw more about 30 meters away, back the way I'd come- I had driven right by them, not seeing them blend in with the yellow willow leaves on the ground.

As I approached, I noticed a group puddling, and as I grew closer I saw there were more- dead, on the ground. This is the second time in my life I've actually seen Tigers puddle. I dropped the net over them, pinning the hoop to the ground- I learned the last time that Tigers don't fly up, they fly down. I secured five in this drop.

Then I went to pick up the dead ones.



However, every time I wanted to pick them up, more Tigers came flying in. Surely, in this case, the "decoys" were working. I caught probably another five while trying to pick up the dead ones.

Headed back up this short (1km) road I passed the spot where I originally stirred up the Tigers, nothing. Not much further though, another yellow explosion as I passed another puddle party which was in bright sunlight- note, while I was driving slow, while I was looking for them! Note to self, they don't stand out like Nymphalidae do, like a pointy rock in the middle of the road; being on the side of the road, and despite being yellow, they are hard to see!

2pm, stopped back at the original field, now 31 plus C. Zero Tigers. ??? Nothing. All the other species- speyeria, etc are here. However, the dark lycaenids aren't here either- usually common, I saw but one, and that on wild parsley not milkweed. Notably, the milkweed was in bloom- but not all of them, and the "other" plants were a good 10cm shorter than last year.

Then, headed up to a WMA hilltop, and drove the dirt road, forest on both sides. Saw a number of them, though took one nectaring on clover, the other on dogwood. None on the milkweed plants.

In all, 11 hours in wet boots yielded some 23 Tigers.

[Chuck]

Interesting update: I told a wildlife photog about the multiple puddling sites on the dirt road; he went the next day and saw none. So whatever was attracting them apparently disappated or something. Goes to show how a fortune accidental occurrence can be just that.

Meanwhile, July 8 & 9, back to the lakeshore. Zero Tigers spotted, despite milkweed apparently in bloom. None spotted flitting around either, nothing. Did see one 30km south of there fly across the road.

Interesting miss at the lakeshore, driving down the road I spotted something big coming across a field, so slammed on the brakes and pulled into a farm market driveway. It was flying right at us as I stopped, and I couldn't make it out- perhaps two Tigers mating? But the color was wrong. As I jumped out I realized that with the size and brown color it could only be a female Callosamia angulifera. It crossed the road and disappeared as I chased after it.

[Chuck]

12july23: went looking for Tigers in Bullitt Co KY. Saw four, all yellow. Milkweed is starting to bloom, but they didn't seem interested; neither thistle nor tall ironweed are close to blooming, and those are the primary nectar sources that coincide with the big August eclosion.

13july23: returned to my primary study site in NY Ontario Co, 90 minutes after a line squall blew through. 21 Tigers observed, 9 captured (1 female).

The female was nectaring on turtlehead. The males were taken on Milkweed.

Milkweed and Beebalm are now full bloom.

Of all those Tigers that were looking for nectar, every one of them tried the Beebalm and moved on; about half gave up and went to milkweed, the other half didn't even bother, just flew off.

[Chuck]

14july23: primary survey field, NY Ontario Co. ~12 observed, 6 captured of which two are female.

Most show extensive, multiple bird hits to hind wings; a few are fresh.

First observation in 2023 of one actually nectaring on Beebalm. The yellow Cup Plants are starting to bloom, but I don't think they'll move to those for a couple weeks.

[adamcotton]

Most show extensive, multiple bird hits to hind wings

Are they good at avoiding being eaten, or are you only seeing the survivors?

Adam.

[Chuck]

Most show extensive, multiple bird hits to hind wings

Are they good at avoiding being eaten, or are you only seeing the survivors?

Adam.

Good question, and I'll try to shed some insight quickly, since I'm going out the door.

Studies have been done concerning whether dark vs. yellow morph in the nominate glaucus makes a difference to predation (it does), so clearly Tigers are edible.

It's not uncommon to find the ubiquitous triangle bite out of FWs. In this population (at least) HW often exhibit multiple triangle bites; to the extent that it's also not uncommon to find the whole rear section of one HW gone, I presume that means it was one heck of a battle.

How many are eaten by birds? I do not know. The spring emergence tends to show more bites, the summer "Late Flight" (MST) tend to show more wholesale destruction to HW, so the predator (type of bird) may change. Oddly enough, during the great summer flight, I rarely see birds attack them, though they do like other butterflies- just today I watched a bird come out of the forest some 100m and grab a Speyeria, and return. Surely, the birds have a wealth of butterflies for food right now, so thinking it through I'm surprised that so many Tigers do exhibit predation damage.

All said though, it is my observation that storms are far more catastrophic than birds. Last year we experienced a series of severe storms, after each the Tiger population would temporarily plummet 95%. Survivors were extremely damaged with 40% or more of wing area missing, and sheared off.

The summer LF / MST Tigers make no evasive action to avoid attacked. Their protection is numbers. Am I seeing only the survivors? Yes, because presumably the victims are gone. It's rare to find pieces of wings, as I do with moths in the morning; Speyeria and Nymphalidae wings are not uncommon. But surely, some of the Tigers must wind up as meals.

[Chuck]

15july23: Wayne Co., Lake Ontario shore area. Despite quite a bit of time searching and looking, none were sighted. EXCEPT later when I was standing on a dock speaking with a friend and one flew between us.

16july23: rain.

[Chuck]

19 July 2023, KY: Bullitt Co.

Went to my favorite haunt mid-afternoon where I spotted a field of Wild Bergamot (AKA "Beebalm"). Seconds into the field I spotted a dark female Papilio glaucus nectaring, and lined up- but as I swiped the last three inches my net caught on a berry thorn bush.

As I was to discover, this time of year is a bear for catching female glaucus. Imagine a field of flowers, with both yellow and black Tigers spread throughout. Now, add in some Papilio troilus, and about a thousand Battus philenor. See the problem? philenor outnumbered glaucus by 50:1. Fortunately, after time I tuned my eyes to pick up on non-fluttering Papilio, and the dark female glaucus were also notably larger.

Still, the philenor were a real pain. Not only the visual distraction, but as soon as I'd get close to a dark female glaucus some stupid male philenor would come and bump her, driving her off.

The Bergamot was closely interwoven with like-height berry thorn plants, which caught on the net bag, making it very challenging to line up and swipe. Plus I finished with hundreds of bleeding pricks and cuts in each thigh. To make things worse, I picked two ticks off me; when I got back to civilization I put all my clothes in a bag and straight into the freezer; after flying home and leaving the luggage in the garage for the night, I grabbed the bag and threw the clothing into the washing machine, yet minutes later found one crawling on me. I hate ticks.

At brief moment- too short to even grab a photo- right in front of me were three of North America's Papilio (glaucus, troilus, philenor) lined up on three consecutive flowers.

"Assessing ecological and physiological costs of melanism in North American Papilio glaucus females: two decades of dark morph frequency declines" (Scriber, 2020) doesn't line up with my observations- I saw only two yellow female glaucus, but more than a half dozen dark females.

Later, I grabbed two puddling on the dirt road, then later one more.

I decided to check out other areas, so used iNaturalist to find other Bergamot. The first field, about ten minutes away, had been mowed. The second, 35 minutes further, was in 100% cloud cover. Bergamot was interspersed with 2.2meter tall grasses- thankfully no more thorns. I did manage to spot and catch one dark female at 6:40pm.

[jhyatt]

15july23: Wayne Co., Lake Ontario shore area. Despite quite a bit of time searching and looking, none were sighted. EXCEPT later when I was standing on a dock speaking with a friend and one flew between us.

16july23: rain.

I know the feeling! In Costa Rica some years ago I collected with a friend who lives there part-time. I really wanted to find Morpho amathonte, but had no luck at all. Not a lot of anything was flying, so I started catching the little common Riodinids I occasionally saw. While I was busy papering one, an amathonte flew between us. I sighed, caught another Riodinid, and while fiddling with getting it out of the net, Parides childrenae flew between us. To top it off, while having a drink on the veranda later that day, a female amathonte flew through the group.

Still, collecting is wonderful fun!

jh

[Chuck]

I know the feeling! In Costa Rica some years ago I collected with a friend who lives there part-time. I really wanted to find Morpho amathonte, but had no luck at all. Not a lot of anything was flying, so I started catching the little common Riodinids I occasionally saw. While I was busy papering one, an amathonte flew between us. I sighed, caught another Riodinid, and while fiddling with getting it out of the net, Parides childrenae flew between us. To top it off, while having a drink on the veranda later that day, a female amathonte flew through the group.

Still, collecting is wonderful fun!

jh

Forgot to mention in KY, saw a stunning Eurytides marcellus- gorgeous glowing turquoise, it cut through our group in a restaurant parking lot. Never saw another last week.

[Chuck]

21 July 2023: Ontario Co. primary research site.

Checked on the Cup Plants first, they're about 25% in bloom; nothing.

So up the hill to the primary site. Bergamot is in full bloom, absolutely stunning the whole field is light purple. Milkweed past bloom. The photo just doesn't pick up all the color of the Bergamot.




15 Tigers observed, four captured. All Tigers that were nectaring were on Bergamot. 80% of individuals are fresh.

Papilio troilus now emerging. Speyeria, those long-lived troopers, are showing signs of aging.

MST Female on Wild Bergamot. Note FW second black band, which often fizzles out in glaucus.



same female. Note: HW black line between dark and yellow is straight, like canadensis; FW submarginal yellow in this one is more like glaucus; HW first orange spot is smaller than other lunules, like appalachiensis.

[Chuck]

22/23 July 2023, Lake Ontario southern shoreline again: one spotted. Milkweed is past bloom, I have no idea what they're nectaring on; unable to find Bergamot in the area. Anyway, the number spotted in 2023 is far below the number seen in 2022.