Mike Reese and I did our annual butterfly count here on Monday.  The morning started out cloudy, and we were worried that we wouldn’t seen many butterflies.  But by about noon the sun came out and it was hot!  And we saw plenty of butterflies.

We saw  787 individual butterflies, 36 species.

Click Here to see the list from the count, as well as a few of Mike Reese’s photos.

I took a few photos too.  Here’s  Mike checking his camera to be sure a photo came out.

We found a very spiky spider in the wetland, feeding on a few of the hundreds of Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies.   I think the spider may be a Starbellied Orbweaver.

Halloween Pennant – one of my favorite dragonflies

A Common Milkweed plant in the wetland – its flowers are a much brighter color than most of the plants that I see.  Usually the flowers are a dusty pink.  Maybe people would plant them more often if the flowers were this color.

Common Buckeye

We saw more Great Spangled Fritillaries than any other species – 273 of them!