We did our annual NABA butterfly count here last week – on July 6th.  It was very hot – 97 degrees by the afternoon.  Mike Reese, Barb Delaney and I were the counters.  We did pretty well in the morning, but by the afternoon we were too hot to want to climb up the hill to get to the top prairies – so we drove the gator up and walked around in the areas that had good butterflies.  Even so, we were glad to get back to a cool house.

Here we are at the end of the gator trip.  We felt a lot more bedraggled than we look!

We didn’t see as many butterflies this year – we wondered if it was because of the hot weather, or the lack of rain, or the early spring.   We saw 34 species – 5 fewer than our record of 39 last year, and only 245 individuals.   Here’s a link to our list.