It has been almost a month since my last post. My plan had always been to post once a week during the summer, summarizing whatever I did each weekend. Well, I slacked off for no good reason the week of May 24, after my dad and I had a good time hiking around the Loess Hills in Monona and Harrison Counties. I had planned a pretty good trip for the following weekend, so I figured I would just wait until after that and combine them in one post. I started off that weekend down at Waubonsie State Park in Fremont County. This is the southwestern-most county in Iowa and the park is known for a number of rare in Iowa butterflies, such as Hoary Edge and Zebra Swallowtail. I then worked my way north along the western border, stopping at Hitchcock Nature Center in Pottawattamie County, the Loess Hills State Forest in Harrison County, and lastly Sylvan Runkel State Preserve in Monona County. And, after that trip, I basically lost my desire to visit, write about, or even think about our natural areas for a couple weeks due to a really deep sense of loss and frustration. I’m not going to elaborate, other than to say that many of you know what event triggered this. So, that is why it has been so long between posts. Now, it’s time to move on to more positive things and get back to regular blog posts.
I don’t have anything particular in mind to write about other than to run through some of the insects I’ve found in the past few weeks. A brief note on the photos below: due to the format of this blog, all photos are limited to 500 pixels wide, which means either shrinking them down or cropping them to fit. The full sized, uncropped versions always look better and can be found on my Flickr page, along with many others.
My two May trips to the Loess Hills were to look for Dusted and Common Roadside-Skippers. Skippers were fairly common; I found 8 species, but did not find either of my targets, which in Iowa are confined to native prairie. At Waubonsie, I saw 5-6 Hayhurst’s Scallopwings. This odd little skipper is rare in Iowa, and generally found as just a single here and there, so finding this many was interesting. Most of the skippers were nectaring in a big roadside clover patch, including 2 Sachem, a southern, immigrant species that I had previously seen only in late fall.
Hayhurst's Scallopwing, Waubonsie State Park, Fremont Co., IA, 29 May 2010
Hobomok Skipper, Waubonsie State Park, Fremont Co., IA, 29 May 2010
Exploring the Remnants 