1) Upcoming Events
2) Holiday Party Jan. 30th
3) Request for Butterfly Photos
4) Spring Butterfly Classes
5) November & December 2004 Butterfly Sightings
6) Migrating Monarchs
7) South Florida Butterfly Surveys
8) And more

NABA's MISSION STATEMENT:
To promote nonconsumptive, recreational butterflying and to increase
the public's enjoyment, knowledge and conservation of butterflies.

1. UPCOMING EVENTS

Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 2:00 to approx. 5:00 p.m. NABA-St. Louis's holiday party will be held the Sunday before the Super Bowl, at Washington University's Tyson Research Center. See article below for more information and directions.

Looking Ahead:

Tues. March 15, 2005 - 7:00 p.m. - NABA-St. Louis and St. Louis Audubon Society are having a joint meeting at the Creve Coeur Government Center with a presentation about Creve Coeur Park.

Wed. March 23, 2005 - 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. - "Butterfly Gardening" class at Florissant Valley
( St. Louis Community College, Florissant), Room 234, Florissant Valley Administration Building. The instructor is Dennis Bozzay.

Thurs. April 7, 2005 - 7:30 p.m. - Joint NABA-St. Louis and WGNSS meeting at the St. Louis County Library Headquarters on Lindbergh, featuring our own Dennis Bozzay and his photography.

Tues. April 19, 2005 - 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. - "Spring Butterflies" class will be taught at Florissant Valley (St. Louis Community College, Florissant), sponsored by NABA-St. Louis.

Sat. April 23, 2005. Field trip for the “Spring Butterflies” class starting at 10:00. Location TBA. All NABA members are welcome to come on the field trip.

Wed. April 27, 2005. “Local Butterflies: Habits and Habitats” class at Meramec Community College, 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. This class is part of the Master Naturalist program offered at Meramec.

Sat. April 30, 2005. Field trip for the “Local Butterflies” class starting at 10:00. Location TBA. All NABA members are welcome to come on the field trip.

2. NABA HOLIDAY PARTY - SUNDAY JANUARY 30th

From 2:00 to approximately 5:00 p.m. on Sun. Jan. 30, 2005,NABA-St. Louis's holiday party will be held at Washington University's Tyson Research Center. (For you football fans, this is the Sunday before the Super Bowl!) This event will be a potluck, so bring your favorite dish. A special "Powerpoint" presentation will be given, featuring our members' best butterfly photos from the past year. There will also be attendance prizes given away at the party, but you must be present to win!

In the event of inclement weather on January 30, please call either Yvonne or Ann Earley to see if the event has been canceled or rescheduled.

Tyson Research Center Directions:From the junction of I-44 and I-270, go west on I-44 about 7 miles to the Antire Rd/ Beaumont exit (exit #269). The entrance gate to Tyson is about 100 ft. past the exit ramp stop sign on the right (north side of I-44). At the entry gate or Gatehouse please sign in or check in with the Gate Attendant, and then proceed down the road to the Tyson Headquarters Office for our party. See you there!

3. REQUEST FOR BUTTERFLY PHOTOS

Please send your favorite butterfly photos or slides or digital images (maximum of 10) you may have taken in the last year, along with any relevant butterfly or photograph details, to Kate Boden by January 22 nd. Please Email Kate at: khbATaccessus.net. A special color "Powerpoint" computer presentation will be given by Kate at our NABA-St. Louis's holiday party on Sunday Jan. 30th. The program will feature our members' best butterfly photos from the St. Louis area, and possibly some from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, taken during 2004. Original photographs or slides will be returned to you after scanning.

4. SPRING BUTTERFLY CLASSES

Want to create or improve your home butterfly garden? Sign up for the "Butterfly Gardening" class that Dennis Bozzay will teach at Florissant Valley Community CollegeWednesday, March 23 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Create a butterfly garden in your own back yard through proper design, plant selection and cultivation. You can attract many kinds of butterflies to your garden from early spring to fall if you have the right plantings - and native plants work wonderfully. You'll see lots of slides and take home lists of nectar and host food plants that will help plan your garden.

Want to brush up on your spring butterfly identification? Sign up for the “Spring Butterflies” class that Jim Ziebol and Yvonne Homeyer will teach at Florissant Valley Community College on Tuesday, April 19 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. On Wednesday, April 27 from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m., our chapter will again offer “Local Butterflies: Habits and Habitats” at Meramec Community College. This class is part of Meramec’s Master Naturalist certificate program. Dr. Tom Bratkowski will talk about the life cycle and biology of butterflies and Jim and Yvonne will focus on identification skills. A field trip will take place on the Saturday following each class. (See Calendar above for more information about field trips). Look for these classes in the brochures that are mailed out by St. Louis Community College, which includes registration information.

5. NOVEMBER & DECEMBER 2004 BUTTERFLY SIGHTINGS by Yvonne Homeyer

Following a week of warm (60 degrees) but rainy weather, the sun and temperatures in the low 70s brought out some butterflies starting on 11/5. Torrey Berger saw a Cabbage White and a Monarch at Clarence Cannon NWR on 11/5. On 11/6, Jim Ziebol reported a Monarch and 1 Orange Sulphur at Tower Grove Park and at Busch that afternoon he saw 4 Clouded, 14 Orange and 3 Cloudless Sulphurs, 2 Anglewings, 1 Gray Hairstreak, 3 Buckeyes and 1 Monarch. Also on 11/6, Anne Craver saw Monarch nectaring on a flower in Clayton. Several Orange and Clouded Sulphurs, Buckeye, Painted Lady and Monarch were seen on 11/7 at Carlyle Lake (YH, JZ). On 11/7 in his south county garden, Jack Harris saw 1 Little Yellow nectaring on Polygonum cespitosum (smartweed), 1 Sachem basking on an oak leaf on the ground, and 1 worn Pearl Crescent nectaring on Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susan). But the prize goes to Richard Day for the 19 species seen at the Days’ Alma, IL property on 11/6 and 11/7: Black Swallowtail, Cloudless Sulphur, Orange Sulphur, Little Yellow, Dainty Sulphur, Cabbage White, Pearl Crescent, Gray Hairstreak, Painted Lady, Red Admiral, Mourning Cloak, Monarch, Comma, Question Mark, Buckeye, Fiery, Peck’s Common Checkered, and Dun Skippers.

On 11/8 at Riverlands, Orange Sulphur, Cabbage White and 1 Monarch were flying at Riverlands (TB). At Horseshoe Lake on 11/9, Torrey Berger counted 50+ Orange Sulphurs, 10 Clouded Sulphurs, 5 Checkered Whites (only the third report of the season), 3 Buckeyes, 1 Painted Lady, and 1 Monarch. On 11/10 at Busch, Jim Ziebol counted 5 Orange Sulphurs, 2 Clouded Sulphurs and a Buckeye.

The last butterflies of the year were seen on 12/4, a sunny day with a high of about 50. Jeannie Moe and Kraig Paradise saw a Question Mark at Riverlands and Linda Virga saw a Mourning Cloak basking in the sun on a rock in her south county garden. Mourning Cloaks, Eastern and Gray Commas, and Question Marks overwinter as adults so keep your eye out for these butterflies on a “warm” winter day.

Spring butterflies appear in late March so it won’t be long before we have another season of wonderful butterflies to enjoy. Watch the Calendar for our field trips which will start in April.

CONTRIBUTORS: Torrey Berger, Dennis Bozzay, Anne Craver, Richard Day, Jack Harris, Yvonne Homeyer, Scott & Annie Marshall, Jeannie Moe, Kraig Paradise, Mark Peters, Linda Virga, Jim Ziebol.

6. MIGRATING MONARCHS

This is an excerpt from Jim Lovett’s email newsletter for the Monarch Watch Project regarding the status of the overwintering population in Mexico:

“Relatively few of our taggers were able to tag large numbers of monarchs this past fall. Their lack of success is a reflection of the relatively low number of migrating monarchs this season. My view has been that the 2004 migration was the poorest in the last 16 years.” For the full text of his article, go to:

http://www.MonarchWatch.org/update/2004/1222.html#3

7. SOUTH FLORIDA BUTTERFLY SURVEYS

"Butterfly-count Project Tracks Declining Species"

By Neil Santaniello, Staff Writer, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
November 13, 2004

To prevent remnant populations of butterfly species from disappearing in Florida, scientists want to know more about their numbers, whereabouts, food sources and prospects for survival.

Scientists resorted to captive breeding to sustain the existence of the Miami Blue, once believed permanently lost from Florida.

Another butterfly, the Schaus swallowtail, flirted with extinction after Hurricane Andrew knocked its numbers to just 17 in 1992, but a pre-emptive effort by scientists helped rebuild populations in south Miami-Dade County.

Rare and dwindling species of butterflies have not gone ignored in South Florida. And now, the North American Butterfly Association is looking for more volunteers to help conduct a 10-month-old survey of rare and not-so-rare butterflies in the region, a study underwritten with a $10,000 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant.

The study is trained only on coastal Miami-Dade County up to 20 miles inland, and on the entire Florida Keys. Many of the survey's most sought-after species inhabit either tropical hardwood hammocks or pine rock lands.

The area overall is home to "probably the most endangered suite of butterflies in the United States," said North American Butterfly Association President Jeffrey Glassberg.

At least in the United States, "No one has really done anything quite like this," said survey coordinator Alana Edwards, a Boca Raton resident and cofounder of the national association's Palm Beach County Atala Chapter. Edwards faces a January deadline to deliver the first report of butterfly sightings for the survey to the wildlife service.

South Florida is worth the special attention, Glassberg said. The area is home to some butterflies found in the Caribbean but nowhere else in the United States, and some found nowhere else in the world, such as the Florida leafwing, a species in serious decline, Glassberg said.

Survey results, forms and information can be found at www.naba.org. The association's Atala and Miami Blue chapters are both involved in the butterfly count project. About 117 surveys have been turned in thus far, but many sections of the survey zone have not yet been examined, said Edwards, training coordinator for Florida Atlantic University's Center for Environmental Studies.

Edwards said nearly a third of the butterfly count has been conducted by a couple living near Haines City: Buck Cooper, a former U.S. Air Force navigator, and his wife, Linda, a former citrus nursery manager.

"We could absolutely use more help," said Glassberg. He said other state chapters plan to travel to South Florida to help with the survey, including groups from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Ideally, anyone interested in volunteering should have some regional butterfly knowledge, but novices might be able to work under butterfly veterans performing surveys, Edwards said. Surveyors are asked to look for and identify butterflies, note their locations, report on any caterpillar food plants they run across and snap pictures if possible. There are forms to fill out to provide that information to the project.

Cooper said he hopes the survey leads to butterfly management plans that prevent threatened species from disappearing altogether, and does not mind making jaunts to Miami-Dade and the Keys to help document what's flitting around.

"It's just an exciting place, if you're interested in butterflies," he said.

Those wishing to help with the survey, or provide other butterfly sighting information, can contact Edwards via e-mail at www.edwardsATNABA.org.

Neil Santaniello can be reached at nsantanielloATsun-sentinel.com.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

8. AND MORE...