CVC Butterfly Blitz 2023's Journal

The eighth OOTW for 2023 is this Hobomok Skipper, seen by Bev (@bevlynn99). Bev first thought this could have been a Little Glassywing, but her instinct also told her it might be a Hobomok Skipper in its dark form, and she was correct!

Bev shared these thoughts about the species and her experiences:
“I saw [the skipper] on a trail near home that I've found to be a bit of a butterfly hotspot. There have been many little skippers emerging in the area but this one looked different. I was excited to get back home to look it up on my butterfly guide.
After studying Rick's guide (A Pocket Guide to Butterflies of Southern & Eastern Ontario (and Southwestern Quebec)), I found it didn't really look like any of the butterflies in the illustrations. I then tried using iNaturalist and Google lens for help. Both glassywing and hobomok were suggested so I submitted my observation as a little glassywing due to the dark colouring of the wings. I still wasn't convinced I had it right so it was great to have Rick Cavasin confirm the species as a hobomok skipper, dark form. I do like to try and figure it out on my own but sometimes we need help from the experts like Rick - thank you!”

This opportunity to learn is what makes the iNaturalist platform a great resource! There are always exceptions to the rules, and a dark form of a butterfly species is an excellent example of this. Furthermore, our understanding of species is always shifting, even within the scientific field. For example, the hobomok species underwent a taxon (i.e. classification) change in 2020 and, along with several other skipper species, the hobomok skipper was moved from the Poanes to Lon genus. Keeping up with these changes can be tricky unless you’re submersed in the material.

Learning these subtle differences between butterfly species, their forms and beyond, is what makes butterflying an exciting puzzle for me as a beginner. What butterfly puzzles get you excited when making observations?

Contest Alert!
We chose this observation specifically as it is a great example for our Butterfly Blitz Bingo Challenge (i.e. any skipper or butterfly on a grass or sedge)! We launched this challenge on July 1st! Here is how to participate:

1. Enroll in the 2023 Butterfly Blitz (cvc.ca/BingoRegistration).
2. Join the Butterfly Blitz project on iNaturalist (inaturalist.org/projects/cvc-butterfly-blitz-2023).
3. Complete a Butterfly Blitz Bingo row, column, or diagonal line and fill out this form (cvc.ca/ButterflyBingoForm) to be entered into a draw to win an Individual Credit Valley Annual Parks Pass. Complete Contest Rules (cvc.ca/contest-rules).

Happy butterflying,
Kristen and the Butterfly Blitz team

The ninth OOTW for 2023 is this Gray Comma, seen by Harleen (@Hark0x0). This is the first time we have featured the Gray Comma as the OOTW!

Harleen shared these thoughts about the species:
“I found the Grey Comma in my garden. Each morning I like to take a little stroll around the house and observe my plants and what kind of little critters are about. I've recently been working on adding native plants to my garden so I am keen (and perhaps a bit impatient haha) to see what sorts of insect life they attract.
The grey comma caught my attention as it fluttered about, flashing its bright orange upper wings. Curious, I followed it until I saw it land on my magnolia tree, which is where I took the photo. It almost seemed to enjoy modelling for me as it turned about in a myriad of positions.”

I can picture exactly what Harleen is depicting, can you? I personally love the comma group of butterflies as I see them less often than other species, partially due to their fantastic ability to camouflage into tree bark with the underside of their wings. When I can spot one, it’s exciting! Harleen caught two great shots of this Gray Comma, one of the underside of the wings (left) and one of the upper side (right).

The Gray Comma is part of the brush-footed family of butterflies and is informally called an “anglewing” because of its uniquely shaped wings. The Question Mark, Eastern Comma, and the Mourning Cloak are other butterflies in this family with uniquely shaped wings.

You may wonder why the Comma and Question Mark species are named after punctuation marks. If you look closely, you can see the ‘comma’ on the underside of the hind wing on the Grey Comma observation (see left photo above). Leave a comment if you found the comma!

The Gray Comma is most often found at the openings and edges of deciduous and mixed forests and chooses gooseberries and azaleas as their host plant. As with other species in the same family, they overwinter as adults. Commas will lay eggs when they emerge in the springtime and fly from June to August. A second brood emerges in October and these butterflies will overwinter as adults.

Want to observe species like the Grey Comma and others? Join us for our butterfly count on Saturday, July 15, 2023 at Warwick Conservation Centre. Last year, we found 21 species of butterflies in just a few brief hours. Learn more and register to attend.

Contest Alert!
Don’t miss the Butterfly Blitz Bingo Challenge! The challenge will run from July 1 to September 13! Here is how to participate:

1. Enroll in the 2023 Butterfly Blitz.
2. Join the 2023 Butterfly Blitz project on iNaturalist.
3. Complete a Butterfly Blitz Bingo row, column, or diagonal line and fill out this form (cvc.ca/ButterflyBingoForm) to be entered into a draw to win an Individual Credit Valley Annual Parks Pass. Complete Contest Rules.

Hello butterfly enthusiasts,

We unfortunately had to cancel this past weekend’s event due to the weather. We're very pleased to confirm the 2023 Butterfly Count has been rescheduled for Saturday, July 22 and the weather forecast looks much more favourable for both humans and butterflies alike.

The event will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Warwick Conservation Area. Please see the updated event listing to register if you can join us this weekend: https://cvc.ca/event/butterfly-count/

Please reach out to cvcvolunteers@cvc.ca if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you on Saturday!

Your Butterfly Blitz team,
Laura, Lindsey, Derek & Kristen

The tenth OOTW for 2023 is this Compton Tortoiseshell, seen by Erin (@erinpilling) and Sage (@sagehandler). Erin and Sage are CVC staff on the Education team. They were out at Belfountain Conservation Area when they spotted this butterfly.
Sage shared these thoughts about the observation:

“Butterflies always seem to elude Erin and fly away just before she can get a photo. We had set up a Conservation Interpreter booth just beside the main map kiosk at the parking lot [in Belfountain Conservation Area]. This butterfly was hanging around a lot on the back of the kiosk beside us and finally Erin decided to try to get a photo of it and it was a good model. After she managed to get a photo it flew away but returned again at least twice to hang out on the kiosk again!”

I appreciate the patience Erin had for this butterfly! As we know through Butterfly Blitz training, patience is key when making observations. Luckily, butterflies will often come back to their previous location – just like this one did.

You can find our CVC Conservation Interpreters at different parks throughout the summer. They will have booths set up at various parks and would love to engage with you!

Last week we featured the Gray Comma as the OOTW. Did you know that the Compton Tortoiseshell is also known as a false comma? They look very similar to species in the comma group and are closely related to them. Do you see the small, silvery mark on the Compton Tortoiseshells hindwing? Very familiar… almost looks like a comma! See the photos below for comparison.

Underside of Compton Tortoiseshell (left). Photo by Christine (@birds-blooms-butterflies).
Underside of Gray Comma (right). Photo by Harleen (@hark0x0).

It’s easy to confuse a Compton Tortoiseshell with a Comma. Use these guidelines to help tell them apart:

• The Compton Tortoiseshell is larger than comma species
• The Tortoiseshell's hindwing has a more subtle and thin silvery mark when compared to a comma’s hindwing mark
• Tortoiseshells have bolder black spots and white spots on the leading edge of all the wings

If you’re looking to observe a Compton Tortoiseshell, you will likely find them along deciduous forest edges and openings from July to November.

Join us at the next event!
Join us for CVC’s annual one-day butterfly count this Saturday, July 22! During this event we will identify and count all the butterfly species found at Warwick Conservation Centre. The data we collect is an official butterfly census and will be submitted to the North American Butterfly Association for publication in their annual report. Learn more and register to attend.

Contest Alert!
Don’t miss the Butterfly Blitz Bingo Challenge! The challenge runs from July 1 to September 13! Here is how to participate:

1. Enroll in the 2023 Butterfly Blitz.
2. Join the 2023 Butterfly Blitz project on iNaturalist.
3. Complete a Butterfly Blitz Bingo row, column, or diagonal line and fill out this form (https://www.cvc.ca/ButterflyBingoForm) to be entered into a draw to win an Individual Credit Valley Annual Parks Pass. Complete Contest Rules.

Today’s OOTW could qualify for either square B1 or I2 on the July Bingo card. What do you think fits better?

Happy butterflying,
Kristen and the Butterfly Blitz team

Hello butterfly fans – welcome to peak butterfly season! To me, the hot July weather means I’ve got a good chance of seeing lots of different species if I go out butterflying. It can be a sweaty business looking for butterflies at this time of year, but also rewarding when you find a species you’ve never seen before.

Our 11th Observation of the Week comes to us from Jane (@jpilsky), who observed this Silver-spotted Skipper at Riverwood with some help from her daughter.

Jane says: “Last week at the Riverwood Conservancy summer campers had the opportunity to use butterfly nets to discover and learn more about insects. This butterfly was caught (and released) by my 4-year-old daughter at a place she now calls "the magic butterfly meadow." It was photographed with my phone and identified by using iNaturalist. Children from 4 to 11 years old worked together to catch and identify several species that day. It was a truly magical experience.”

I love to hear about this kind of butterfly magic! It’s wonderful to see how butterflies can help connect some of our littlest people with nature. Jane couldn’t agree more – she is the founder of Wild Bright Play, an organization with the mission to support children’s healthy development through outdoor learning and play.

If you’d like to visit the magic butterfly meadow, be sure to sign up for the next Butterfly Blitz event, taking place at Riverwood on August 19. More details here: https://cvc.ca/event/butterfly-blitz-butterfly-identification-walk/

I’ve got a soft spot for Silver-spotted Skippers. While many skippers are small and frustratingly difficult to identify, Silver-spotted Skippers are relatively large and distinctive. I think their brown, orange, and silver wings are beautiful, and being easy to identify helps me like them even more.

Silver-spotted Skippers are also a symbol to me of how much the CVC Butterfly Blitz has achieved in the last five years. At the start of the project in 2019, I wrote a blog post about this species. Although they are a common and easy to ID butterfly, there were only six iNaturalist records of them from the Credit River watershed. The lack of data on butterflies in our area was one of the main reasons we started the Butterfly Blitz, and the Silver-spotted Skipper was a great example of that.

We may have started with 6 records, but now we’re up to 165! This amazing growth in data hasn’t been just for the Silver-spotted Skipper, but for all butterflies in our watershed. I’m confident that we now have a good dataset for CVC and others to use to better understand butterflies in our area. Stay tuned for more posts as the Butterfly Blitz winds up to hear more about our plans.

Contest Alert!
Don’t miss the Butterfly Blitz Bingo Challenge!
If you’ve ever played Bingo, you already know what to do. Use your iNaturalist observations to complete one of the rows on the Bingo card below. You may already have all the observations you need for a row, or maybe you just need one more … check it out!

Note that since July is almost over, we’ll be launching the August card soon. Don’t worry - you’ll still be able to submit your July observations as well. The challenge runs from July 1 to September 13! Here is how to participate:

1. Enroll in the 2023 Butterfly Blitz.
2. Join the 2023 Butterfly Blitz project on iNaturalist.
3. Complete a Butterfly Blitz BINGO row, column, or diagonal line and fill out this form (cvc.ca/ButterflyBingoForm) to be entered into a draw to win an Individual Credit Valley Annual Parks Pass. Complete Contest Rules.

Happy butterflying,
Laura and the Butterfly Blitz team

Our annual North American Butterfly Association Butterfly Count took place on July 22. While we were sad to cancel our original event date because of the bad weather, it worked out well in the end. The weather on the 22nd was perfect for a day of looking for butterflies!

Image: A beautiful butterfly day at Warwick Conservation Centre

A large crowd joined for the count, including: @annm403, @ashley2190, @bette-ann, @bob15noble, @charlotte_adamson, @ginnihang, @ladyluckunexposed, @lbissegger, @melmac, @patrick2008, @photobiophilia, @sam10turner, and @santhoshdt plus many more not on iNaturalist.

Image: 31 people took part in our count

Together we observed 206 individual butterflies of 25 species over the course of the 4-hour event. This is an increase compared to last year’s event, where we saw 161 individuals of 21 species.

There were too many great finds to select just one OOTW. I love seeing the smile on people’s faces when they get their first butterfly of the day, or first butterfly ever!

One of my goals for the day was to see a Harvester, a somewhat hard to find species with an unusual lifestyle–they have carnivorous caterpillars! You can read more about their biology in our OOTW post from 2021. When a small group of us went to trudge through a wetland, @sam10turner managed to net a Harvester to much excitement. Shortly after that, Ellodee casually caught one in her net at the edge of the nursery. Both finds made me super happy.

Another notable find was this American Copper, noticed and netted by @santhoshdt. We all assumed it was a Bronze Copper at first, which had been seen in around the same spot last year. I was thrilled when it turned out to be an American Copper, which hasn’t been seen in the Credit River Watershed since 1970! 😊

Finally, we also saw a few European Common Blues, like this one. This introduced species was first seen in the Credit River Watershed in 2021 and has been spreading since then. This is the furthest north in the watershed that it has been documented, and it was a surprise to me to find it at the count.

Our 2023 butterfly count was a success, and I’m so grateful to everyone who came out that day and helped add to our observations. If you missed out on this event but would like to join another one, check out our project page: https://cvc.ca/butterfly-blitz/.

Happy butterflying,
Laura and the Butterfly Blitz team