by C. Paxton
Sunday, September 8th, at Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, The Louisiana Master Naturalists Northeast Group and eminent Lepidopterist and author, Craig Marks gathered at Black Bayou Lake NWR for our second butterfly count at BBL. Craig has just completed a butterfly count at The Poverty Point World Heritage Site.
The full report will come in due course, but there were 12 participants including LMN-NE and Friends of Black Bayou members, in her LMN-NE Facebook post Dr. Bette Kauffman announced some great news: "we identified 27 species and counted 277 butterflies! That's pretty good. This was only our second count at BBL and last year's yielded only 19 species."
The most counted butterfly was the Gulf Fritillary with 130 observations of adults, 48 caterpillars and 11 chrysalises! Dr. Kauffman announced a particularly remarkable observation was that of a Dorantes Longtail Skipper, this was made by Naturalist Stephen Pagans and photographed by himself and his companion Charles Paxton, when validated this will be a first official record of the species for Ouachita Parish!
Last year we had a prolonged drought in Fall. This year has seen better conditions. The refuge continues to play an important role in scientific research and Citizen Science is proving to be useful!
The full report will come in due course, but there were 12 participants including LMN-NE and Friends of Black Bayou members, in her LMN-NE Facebook post Dr. Bette Kauffman announced some great news: "we identified 27 species and counted 277 butterflies! That's pretty good. This was only our second count at BBL and last year's yielded only 19 species."
The most counted butterfly was the Gulf Fritillary with 130 observations of adults, 48 caterpillars and 11 chrysalises! Dr. Kauffman announced a particularly remarkable observation was that of a Dorantes Longtail Skipper, this was made by Naturalist Stephen Pagans and photographed by himself and his companion Charles Paxton, when validated this will be a first official record of the species for Ouachita Parish!
Last year we had a prolonged drought in Fall. This year has seen better conditions. The refuge continues to play an important role in scientific research and Citizen Science is proving to be useful!
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