Red Admiral Break-Out from Texas

[donald...@gmail.com]

Tuesday April 9th report -

"The red admirals must have been migrating or something as there must have been 50-100 of them a few comma's as well all nectaring on the willow bushes. Calton Swamp Ont - Levi Turnbull"

Chip Taylor from Monarch Watch states: "The last time Red Admirals had a breakout year was in 2012. That outbreak followed the 7 month drought in 2011 that ended in Sept of that year. 7 months of rain followed. The drought probably knocked back the predators and parasites that didn’t recover well in the cooler months. The rainfall in Sept and the following months led to rapid growth of false nettle - Boehmeria cylindrica - the main host for the red admiral in southern latitudes. The combination of lush host plants and low numbers of predators and parasites apparently allowed the RAs to build up rapidly leading to the migration in early April. Similar conditions, but less severe and slightly different occurred this spring. This year two sweeps of freezing temperatures in January probably took out the predators and parasites over wide areas. Those events were followed by widespread rainfall and good plant growth and another breakout RA population and migration to the north where the host is the true nettle.

Ann told me a few days ago that we already have Red Admiral eggs on the few nettle plants we have in the garden here in Lawrence, Kansas (Monarch Waystation #1).

Many of the predators that attack RAs also feed on monarch larvae so I’m going to take the welfare of the RA population is a positive sign that monarch larvae suffered fewer losses to predators in March than is usually the case."

[james holdsworth]

I noted hundreds (likely many thousand) northbound yesterday on the strong south winds, along with some American Ladies.

[Steve Pike]

Today at Point Pelee I counted 358 America Ladies (and zero Common PL) mostly in the tip area even thought I covered most of the best butterfly habitats in the park.   Not surprisingly zero COPL as the record early date for Pelee is April 19, 1995 (Alan Wormington).

The maximum one day count for American Lady at Pelee is 900 on April 23, 2001 (Alan Wormington, Fred J. Urie, Henrietta T. O’Neill et al.) but I’m unsure of what it was for the 2012 migration event.

I noticed my first Red Admiral in the park last Saturday, April 6th and thought it might’ve been record early especially with the unusually warm spring so far but later found an interesting earlier record of March 14, 2012 (Robert J. Cermak, Alan Wormington).  

I had a feeling there may have been some in the park earlier in the week as there was more good weather for a potential movement for RA and other butterflies but couldn’t find time to check it out and unfortunately had to cut my time in the park short on Saturday but came back again on Sunday and counted 148 and after leaving the park continued seeing them throughout Essex County in big numbers on my way home and for the next two days widespread in Essex County. 

I spent another full day in the park today and lost count of how many RA’s were in the park.  

They were omnipresent and also immigrating across the lake from the south as viewed from the tip while I was watching for birds starting at 9am but certainly the numbers were in the thousands.  

In 2012 I was present in the park for most of the last invasion and I do remember seeing many more then today but I have no numbers to substantiate that.  10’s of thousands per day is probably correct and what I remember people talking about and the large numbers persisted over a long period of time, at least a few weeks or longer.  

There’s still lots of time for the numbers to build as it’s only been five short days since I noticed them locally and also favorable conditions coming over this weekend with more south winds and warm temps so perhaps it could get interesting similar to the 2012 spectacle.  

Locally we’ve been hoping for this to happen again since as following the RA irruption came Sleepy Orange at Pelee eleven times in the migrant year of 2012, between May 5 and May 12, by a total of eighteen observers.

Also Dainty Sulphur, many reports of this species at Pelee and elsewhere in Southern Ontario. 

Attached photo is a Hackberry Tree with sap attracting Admirals, Mourning Cloak and Eastern Comma.  In the close vicinity of this tree there were over 50 Admirals so impressive to see for sure and will be interesting as to what happens next?

Happy Lepping,

Steve Pike

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[Maxim Larrivée]

That’s really cool Steve. If you could please report your tallies on e-butterfly.org that would be fantastic, that way we can estimate the size of this year’s migration as we will have counts of individuals like we did in 2012 which is not possible to get from iNat.

Thanks!

Max.

Envoyé de mon iPad

Le 10 avr. 2024 à 22:11, Steve Pike <stevep...@gmail.com> a écrit :



Today at Point Pelee I counted 358 America Ladies (and zero Common PL) mostly in the tip area even thought I covered most of the best butterfly habitats in the park.   Not surprisingly zero COPL as the record early date for Pelee is April 19, 1995 (Alan Wormington).

The maximum one day count for American Lady at Pelee is 900 on April 23, 2001 (Alan Wormington, Fred J. Urie, Henrietta T. O’Neill et al.) but I’m unsure of what it was for the 2012 migration event.

I noticed my first Red Admiral in the park last Saturday, April 6th and thought it might’ve been record early especially with the unusually warm spring so far but later found an interesting earlier record of March 14, 2012 (Robert J. Cermak, Alan Wormington).  

I had a feeling there may have been some in the park earlier in the week as there was more good weather for a potential movement for RA and other butterflies but couldn’t find time to check it out and unfortunately had to cut my time in the park short on Saturday but came back again on Sunday and counted 148 and after leaving the park continued seeing them throughout Essex County in big numbers on my way home and for the next two days widespread in Essex County. 

I spent another full day in the park today and lost count of how many RA’s were in the park.  

They were omnipresent and also immigrating across the lake from the south as viewed from the tip while I was watching for birds starting at 9am but certainly the numbers were in the thousands.  

In 2012 I was present in the park for most of the last invasion and I do remember seeing many more then today but I have no numbers to substantiate that.  10’s of thousands per day is probably correct and what I remember people talking about and the large numbers persisted over a long period of time, at least a few weeks or longer.  

There’s still lots of time for the numbers to build as it’s only been five short days since I noticed them locally and also favorable conditions coming over this weekend with more south winds and warm temps so perhaps it could get interesting similar to the 2012 spectacle.  

Locally we’ve been hoping for this to happen again since as following the RA irruption came Sleepy Orange at Pelee eleven times in the migrant year of 2012, between May 5 and May 12, by a total of eighteen observers.

Also Dainty Sulphur, many reports of this species at Pelee and elsewhere in Southern Ontario. 

Attached photo is a Hackberry Tree with sap attracting Admirals, Mourning Cloak and Eastern Comma.  In the close vicinity of this tree there were over 50 Admirals so impressive to see for sure and will be interesting as to what happens next?

Happy Lepping,

Steve Pike

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 7:42 PM james holdsworth <jmholds...@gmail.com> wrote:

I noted hundreds (likely many thousand) northbound yesterday on the strong south winds, along with some American Ladies.

On Wednesday, April 10, 2024 at 6:47:35 PM UTC-4 donald...@gmail.com wrote:

Tuesday April 9th report -

"The red admirals must have been migrating or something as there must have been 50-100 of them a few comma's as well all nectaring on the willow bushes. Calton Swamp Ont - Levi Turnbull"

Chip Taylor from Monarch Watch states: "The last time Red Admirals had a breakout year was in 2012. That outbreak followed the 7 month drought in 2011 that ended in Sept of that year. 7 months of rain followed. The drought probably knocked back the predators and parasites that didn’t recover well in the cooler months. The rainfall in Sept and the following months led to rapid growth of false nettle - Boehmeria cylindrica - the main host for the red admiral in southern latitudes. The combination of lush host plants and low numbers of predators and parasites apparently allowed the RAs to build up rapidly leading to the migration in early April. Similar conditions, but less severe and slightly different occurred this spring. This year two sweeps of freezing temperatures in January probably took out the predators and parasites over wide areas. Those events were followed by widespread rainfall and good plant growth and another breakout RA population and migration to the north where the host is the true nettle.

Ann told me a few days ago that we already have Red Admiral eggs on the few nettle plants we have in the garden here in Lawrence, Kansas (Monarch Waystation #1).

Many of the predators that attack RAs also feed on monarch larvae so I’m going to take the welfare of the RA population is a positive sign that monarch larvae suffered fewer losses to predators in March than is usually the case."

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[rick cavasin]

Hi All,

It's great to see some traffic on this list.  There hasn't been many reports in recent years.  But folks should remember that (AFAIK) sending an email to this list doesn't result in observations being recorded in any kind of citizen science database. For example, nobody is funneling observations from this list into the Ontario Butterfly Atlas.

Also, please note that one can report total counts of a species on iNaturalist - you just have to add the "Count" field to your observation.  Or you can simply include your count in the notes section of your observation (but this second approach is suboptimal).  Reporting your tally on iNat in this way will get your data into the Ontario Butterfly Atlas, but it may not work for other projects that are attempting to monitor various species.  They would have to check the "Count" field to see your totals.

Some suggested guidelines for iNat reporting can be found here:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ontario-butterfly-atlas/journal/60557-tips-on-data-entry-that-will-help-the-tea-s-ontario-butterfly-atlas

The Ontario Butterfly Atlas project journal on iNat contains a few other articles containing various tips:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ontario-butterfly-atlas/journal

Yesterday, I created a video tutorial for folks who report their observations by submitting a spreadsheet directly to the Ontario Butterfly Atlas.  This video provides some tips on how to use the spreadsheet template in an efficient manner.  I've sent a link to the video to folks who have been reporting via spreadsheet in the past few years.  If anyone would like information on how to report butterfly observations to the Atlas via spreadsheet, please feel free to contact me directly.

I'm planning to create a similar video tutorial for Atlas contributors who are using iNaturalist.  I hope that this video will help with problems that folks have had with entering multiple observations from their outings.
When the video is available, I'll post a link to this list.  I expect it will happen in the next few days.

Cheers, Rick

[Steve Pike]

Will do Max and Rick, I will submit some RA and PALA numbers later on today to e-butterfly as well as a few other rarities seen at Pelee the last few years as locally we’ve been keeping track of things as best we can since Alan Wormington’s passing.  

I think last year for some reason I’m still unsure of very few rare immigrant butterflies were seen at Pelee or across Ontario for that matter which is likely also why this group has been inactive but I still consider it an excellent platform to get the word out on exceptionally rare butterflies or unprecedented events similar to these so great to see it’s still active.

Cheers,

Steve 

[Donald Davis]

Reports may be archived on Google Group Ontario Butterflies:

Butterfly Highway Between Ontario and Texas - May 3, 2012 –

That is how Point Pelee area naturalist Alan Wormington described May 3, 2012. From his viewpoint, the most outstanding and remarkable day of butterflying in the park's history, with all sorts of record early sightings and record high sightings of southern species. MONARCH -- 13
-- a good count for spring immigrants, and on a very early date; all were extremely fresh, thus part of the "transit brood" produced somewhere along the way, such as maybe Arkansas.

For May 5^th, 2012:

"SLEEPY ORANGE --- a total of (6) in the following order:
1 -- S of Northwest Beach (Stephen T. Pike)
1 -- S of PPNP entrance (Andrew E. Keaveney)
4 -- The Dunes Beach (Michael H. King, J. Michael Tate et al.)

There are only two previous records for Point Pelee (1992 and 1998) and only three records elsewhere in Ontario (Kitchener 1934, Quetico Provincial Park 1978, and Scarborough 1990).

All apparently were moving NORTH through the park.

DAINTY SULPHUR --- 10+
-- multiple reports, likely 10-12 in total.

EARLY CRESCENT (Phyciodes euclea)
-- one extremely fresh male at The Dunes Beach (William G. Lamond, Alan Wormington); this ties the record-early date for Point Pelee (1999).

The BUTTERFLY HIGHWAY from Texas to Ontario is full-steam ahead.

Alan Wormington
Leamington, Ontario"

Don Davis

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/onbutterflies/CAP0RSERR1GRo9gyYxUJe123p9vfawq0h%2BmJcKdNMShBsDnxiRA%40mail.gmail.com

.

[rick cavasin]

Hi Steve,

On Thu, 11 Apr 2024 at 08:49, Steve Pike <stevep...@gmail.com> wrote:

Will do Max and Rick, I will submit some RA and PALA numbers later on today to e-butterfly as well as a few other rarities seen at Pelee the last few years as locally we’ve been keeping track of things as best we can since Alan Wormington’s passing.  

There are a number of benefits to publishing observations on citizen science platforms that may not be obvious.  Putting them where other folks can see them in a timely fashion sometimes leads to questions being asked which can only be answered if they are asked early enough.  IDs can be double checked, observations can be followed up on, etc.  There are hundreds of unusual observations in the Atlas I'd love to be able to get more info on, but the observers don't remember the details, or they aren't with us any longer.

I think last year for some reason I’m still unsure of very few rare immigrant butterflies were seen at Pelee or across Ontario for that matter which is likely also why this group has been inactive but I still consider it an excellent platform to get the word out on exceptionally rare butterflies or unprecedented events similar to these so great to see it’s still active.

I hope folks aren't using this list exclusively for reporting rarities.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't feel that the only observations that are worth reporting are those for rare immigrant butterflies.  In fact, my personal feeling is that historically, far too much of a fuss has been made over one-off observations of rare migrants.  I guess these observations are very important to listers, but they tell us very little about what's going on with our local/native species.  YMMV.

I'm not suggesting that folks need to post every time they see a Cabbage White in their yard, but knowing that someone has sighted a common species in one part of the province can serve as "heads up" for someone in another part of the province.   There are a few folks out there who do try to fill in the gaps in our knowledge (vs filling in the gaps in their personal life lists), and knowing what other folks are seeing can help them with planning their expeditions.  It's especially important these days, what with flight season timings being so wonky.

Cheers, Rick

[rick cavasin]

Hi Don,

You are absolutely correct.  One can find old list postings on the google groups website.  I sometimes refer to those archived reports when I'm trying to sort out anomalies in the Atlas records.  But those archived reports are very different from having the observations mapped and tabulated the way they are in the Ontario Butterfly Atlas.  It isn't a searchable database.

Several years worth of the observations posted on this list were transcribed into Atlas records (roughly 2011 to 2016). The data entry is a very time consuming and error prone process, so I gave up doing that years ago.  These days, I can barely keep up with reviewing the thousands of observations posted to iNaturalist every year.  With iNaturalist, I can download and process the observations in bulk at the end of the year. That's still an onerous task, but I'm getting much more bang for my buck (10's of thousands of observations with less effort than it would take to transcribe a few hundred observations from this list).  

When someone posts their observations to a citizen science platform like iNaturalist, the data is available to many users all over the world, not just the Ontario Butterfly Atlas.  That said, when you post a report on this list, you're communicating directly with fellow butterfly enthusiasts, vs posting your report on a citizen science platform and hoping that your friends see your report.   I think the two platforms serve different/complementary functions.  If you're trying to give your fellow enthusiasts a heads up regarding what's happening, you post to this list.  If you want your observations to contribute to science, then submit them to a citizen science platform.

That's my two cents.

Cheers, Rick