North American Butterfly Association
North American Butterfly Association
9th Biennial Members' Meeting
Mission, Texas
October 28-31, 2010
Field Trips:
You do not need to fill out this online form if you have sent back the hardcopy form.
If you wish to pick your field trips online please select three (3) from the MEETING FIELD TRIPS below (A-E),
one for each day, from the list of multiple field trips that
will be run each day (the order of the chosen trips does not
select the day the trip will run) and enter the letter of the trip in the blanks.
If you have any questions
about this process, please contact Lisa Lewis at E-mail: lewis@naba.org or Phone: 973-285-0907).
If you want to travel as a group for a trip, please list the names of others
you want to go with below (up to 3 who have registered for the meeting). Each
person must still register individually if you are asking to travel in a group
and we will try to keep you with your group each day.
MEETING FIELD TRIPS (FRIDAY-SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29-31) (choose three)
A. National Butterfly Center/Bentsen State Park - About a 10 minute drive southwest from the Hampton Inn. The gardens at the 100 acres National Butterfly Center are far and away the best place in the Lower Rio Grande Valley to find butterflies. Special bait feeding stations increase the chance of seeing rare non-flower feeders, such as the One-spotted Prepona that showed up a few years ago. The list of species seen here is now 198, with 100 species seen in a single day! At Bentsen State Park, the area around the Visitors Center has ample butterfly plantings and these normally attract large numbers of butterflies, including rarities. This trip will probably produce the greatest number of species and we suggest that everyone take this trip on at least one day.
B. Frontera Audubon/Estero Llano Grande - About a 30 minute drive east from Mission. The 15 acre gardens at Frontera Audubon and the 176 acre Estero Llano Grande State Park are conveniently covered in one trip. The gardens at Frontera offer the best possibility of seeing a Polydamas Swallowtail while the extensive trails and gardens at Estero Llano Grande are usually filled with interesting butterflies.
C. Laguna Atascosa - About a 1 hour 45 minute drive east from Mission. This beautiful National Wildlife Refuge offers spectacular panoramas of the Texas coast. In the late fall of most years thousands of flowering mistflowers and lantanas provide an explosion of color. This trip provides the only realistic chance for Obscure Skipper and probably the best chance for Blue Metalmark. With 413 species of birds recorded, it has the largest list of birds seen of any U.S. National Wildlife Refuge.
D. Loma Alta/Palo Alto Battlefield/Resaca de la Palma State Park - About a 1 hour drive east from Mission. Xami Hairstreak used to be resident at Loma Alta but are now sporadic. Still, this is your best chance to see this species. In addition, Loma Alta and the Palo Alto Battlefield sites offer the chance of seeing Definite Patches, which are unlikely to be seen elsewhere.
E. Roma/Falcon State Park - About a 1 hour drive west from Mission. Because the rainfall gradient runs east (highest) to west (lowest) along the length of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, the areas 60 miles west of Mission are significantly drier. Participants on this trip will butterfly selected areas in the vicinity of Roma, as well as the very productive gardens at Falcon State Park. This trip probably has the best chance of finding Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreaks, Banded Patches, Erichson’s White-Skippers, and Desert Checkered-Skippers.