Beyond the Butterfly Garden – October, 2017

 By Laurie Sheppard

Butterflies can be found at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge during any month or season, and throughout the year, visitors are encouraged to look beyond the Butterfly Garden to find them. The profusion of color that summer and fall flowers bring is over. Now is the time for butterflies to feed on small flowers or late blooms. Migrants are often seen looking for places to spend the night.

Without a doubt, the Monarch is the star of the season! We are fortunate to have these beauties year round but in October, Monarchs from everywhere east of the Rockies are passing through Texas on the way to their wintering grounds in Mexico. You will find them all over the refuge, either looking for food or landing on leaves as they search for a secure place to rest for the night.

The most similar mimic of the Monarch is the Viceroy. The Viceroy is easily identified by the black line through their hindwing. Viceroys do not migrate like Monarchs. Instead, mature caterpillars create a shelter from a rolled Cottonwood or Willow leaf in which to spend the winter.

The Queen is smaller and typically a rich brown color, but also mimics the Monarch. Their behavior is similar as well. Queens sometimes gather to roost communally at night and in Texas, they appear to migrate. The Queen’s caterpillar host is Milkweed, like the Monarch’s, which makes them distasteful to predators. All three of these are seen together in the Butterfly Garden.

The Red-spotted Purple is a strikingly patterned butterfly with an iridescent blue hindwing above. They are not often found nectaring on blooms, instead feeding on tree sap, rotting fruit, or animal dung. Their larvae feed on Oaks and Cottonwoods, and caterpillars over-winter.

The Tawny Emperor is related to but less common than the Hackberry Emperor. They lay their eggs on Hackberry trees and rarely visit flowers, so look for them in the woods on Oil Field Rd. Tawny Emperor caterpillars overwinter in groups of ten (10) or so in a curled dead leaf.

Fall is a good time to find southern strays like the Brazilian Skipper. These are very large compared to other skippers and fly spring to fall in south Texas. Look for them in the Butterfly Garden and then see if you can find them elsewhere on the refuge. Present only in small numbers, it’s unlikely they breed in Grayson County.

Other strays you might find in the garden include the Mallow Scrub-hairstreak which could be easily overlooked as being “just another Gray Hairstreak.” These are usually found in the Rio Grande Valley and do not cross the Red River but we’ve found them annually at Hagerman.

 A rare stray seen here is the Tailed Orange. Typically a butterfly of Mexico, in years with heavy rains, these migrate north into Texas. They are very similar to the Sleepy Orange but their hindwing narrows to a distinctive point.

NOTE: Laurie Sheppard is a Texas Master Naturalist.  She will be presenting the program, "Butterflies at HNWR", at the Refuge on Butterfly Day, October 14, and also demonstrate tagging.

Frozen! Frostweed Lives Up to Its Name

Text and Photos by Laurie Sheppard

Without question, the Butterfly Garden at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge was a huge success this year!  It was host to thousands of butterflies and other nectar feeders as well as hundreds of human visitors.  It was a place of quiet reflection and explosions of color, attracting several new county record butterflies and many more common residents and migrants.  Butterflies fed and mated and laid their eggs for the next generation of their species.  Caterpillars feasted on the leaves of their host plants and pupated in time.  Fresh butterflies emerged and repeated the cycle.  So, too, flowers blossomed in their season and pollinators spread each plant’s genetic material to the next bloom.  Through it all, one of the stars of the garden was the Frostweed, standing tall in the back row.

Frostweed grows in a clump that can reach six feet tall by the first frost.  Large, bushy leaves emerge on growing stalks in early spring, providing a green backdrop to more colorful flowering plants. By late summer, clumps of white flowers spread out atop the Frostweed’s slender stalks.  These drab seeming flowers attract a multitude of butterflies, and those attract photographers and butterfly watchers daily.  Among the many butterfly species to nectar there, you could find Gossamer-wings like Gray Hairstreaks, Eastern Tailed-blues, and the uncommon White M Hairstreak.  The county-record Mallow Scrub-hairstreak was often seen on Frostweed and dramatic Great Purple Hairstreaks, as shown below,  were also frequent visitors.

Monarch butterflies’ peak migration occurred simultaneously with the peak blossoming of the Frostweed in the back of the garden and throughout every day, the air was filled with orange wings, as shown above.  Sharing the blooms were other Brush-footed butterflies, including Painted Ladies, American Ladies, Goatweed Leafwings, Queens, Gulf Fritillaries and many others.  Not only did the Frostweed attract nectar feeders, it also was a larval host for the Bordered Patch butterfly (shown below), which frequently nectared on mistflower elsewhere in the garden.

Summer ended and with the first frost, most butterfly activity died down.  Leaves of the Frostweed dried and curled and other plants in the garden also died back.  Then, overnight on December 9, 2016, the refuge experienced its first hard freeze of the winter season.  Ice formed in puddles and plants that had managed to survive that first light frost finally succumbed.  That is when the Frostweed showed us how it got its name!  As each plant became cold, water and sap inside their stalk expanded and the outer bark split, allowing moisture to leak out.  The liquid froze in the cold temperatures.  The plant responded by pumping more water out of the ground to replace what was lost and that, too, leaked out, causing the ice crystals to grow.  This continued all night and in the morning, each Frostweed plant had a unique ice sculpture at its base.  Thin ribbons of ice curled and spread, only to drop off and melt as the day warmed.  This phenomenon will not repeat itself until next fall when a new batch of Frostweed freezes for the first time.

Frostweed (Verbesina virginica) is a member of the Aster family, along with Ragweed, some of the wild Daisies, and Roosevelt Weed (Baccharis neglecta).  Frostweed is also known as White Crownbeard, Iceplant, Iceweed, Indian Tobacco, or Squawweed.  Native Americans are said to have used the dried leaves as a substitute for tobacco and other parts of the plant for medicinal purposes to treat gastrointestinal, urinary, or eye issues. Like its relatives, Frostweed is easy to grow and it tolerates many different soil, water, and lighting conditions.  It grows from central Texas eastward and north into the mid-Atlantic states.  A biennial, it readily reseeds and also may form sizeable colonies through spreading rhizomes. 

Monarchs at HNWR Now

Monarchs on Frostweed in butterfly Garden, by Bill Powell

Monarch butterflies are taking center stage at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge these days as large numbers are seen nectaring, "fattening" up as they journey to Mexico for the winter.  Photographers are having a field day in the Butterfly Garden, which is living up to its designation as a Monarch Waystation,  finding monarchs galore on the Frostweed and Baccharis planted there and blooming just in time for the migration.  North American monarchs are the only butterflies that make such a  journey, which the World Wildlife Federation describes as:

... a marvelous migratory phenomenon. They travel between 1,200 and 2,800 miles or more from the United States and Canada to central Mexican forests. There the butterflies hibernate in the mountain forests, where a less extreme climate provides them a better chance to survive.

Also from WWF,

The monarch butterfly is known by scientists as Danaus plexippus, which in Greek literally means "sleepy transformation." The name evokes the species' ability to hibernate and metamorphize.

From National Geographic:

Butterflies that emerge from chrysalides (pupa state) in late summer and early fall are different from those that do so during the longer days and warmer weather of summer. These monarchs are born to fly, and know because of the changing weather that they must prepare for their lengthy journey.

Only monarchs born in late summer or early fall make the migration, and they make only one round trip. By the time next year's winter migration begins, several summer generations will have lived and died and it will be last year's migrators' great grandchildren that make the trip. Yet somehow these new generations know the way, and follow the same routes their ancestors took—sometimes even returning to the same tree.

Many scientists are concerned about the eastern population of monarchs, which summer east of the Rocky Mountains. This group is occurring in ever smaller numbers, and its survival may be threatened by a series of natural disasters in the Mexican wintering grounds, as well as by reduced acreage of milkweed plants in their summer home.

National Campaign to Save Beleaguered Monarch Butterfly

From The Friends Newswire:

This spring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service launched a major campaign aimed at saving the declining monarch butterfly.

The Service signed a cooperative agreement with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), announced a major new funding initiative with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), and pledged $2 million in immediate funding for on-the-ground conservation projects around the country.

Introducing the new initiatives at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. were Service Director Dan Ashe, U.S. Senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar, NWF President and CEO Collin O’Mara, and NFWF representatives.

Monarch at HNWR, by Laurie Lawler

Monarchs are found across the United States. While they numbered some 1 billion in 1996, their numbers have declined by approximately 90 percent in recent years. The decline is the result of numerous threats, particularly loss of habitat due to agricultural practices, development and cropland conversion. Degradation of wintering habitat in Mexico and California has also had a negative impact on the species.

 “We can save the monarch butterfly in North America, but only if we act quickly and together,” said Ashe. “And that is why we are excited to be working with the National Wildlife Federation and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to engage Americans everywhere, from schools and community groups to corporations and governments, in protecting and restoring habitat. Together we can create oases for monarchs in communities across the country.”

The memorandum of understanding between NWF and the Service will serve as a catalyst for national collaboration on monarch conservation, particularly in planting native milkweed and nectar plants, the primary food sources in breeding and migration habitats for the butterfly.

The new NFWF Monarch Conservation Fund was kick-started by an injection of $1.2 million from the Service that will be matched by private and public donors. The fund will provide the first dedicated source of funding for projects working to conserve monarchs.

From California to the Corn Belt, the Service will also fund numerous conservation projects totaling $2 million this year to restore and enhance more than 200,000 acres of habitat for monarchs while also supporting more than 750 schoolyard habitats and pollinator gardens. Many of the projects will focus on the I-35 corridor from Texas to Minnesota, areas that provide important spring and summer breeding habitats in the eastern population’s central flyway.

The monarch may be the best-known butterfly species in the United States. Every year they undertake one of the world’s most remarkable migrations, traveling thousands of miles over many generations from Mexico, across the United States, to Canada.

The monarch’s exclusive larval host plant and a critical food source is native milkweed, which has been eradicated or severely degraded in many areas across the U.S. The accelerated conversion of the continent’s native short and tallgrass prairie habitat to crop production has also had an adverse impact on the monarch. 

Monarch caterpillar on newly planted milkweed in Butterfly Garden at HNWR

The monarch serves as an indicator of the health of pollinators across the American landscape. Conserving and connecting habitat for monarchs will benefit other plants, animals and important insect and avian pollinators.

A new Web site -- http://www.fws.gov/savethemonarch -- provides information on how Americans can get involved with the campaign.