Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Got Butterflies??

I just spent about 30 minutes outside in my garden and walking the surrounding wood-line. Numerous flowers are in full-bloom, the breeze was calm; but something was missing.

I saw exactly zero butterflies. No skippers, no swallowtails, no sulphurs; not even a cabbage white. Nothing ! Something isn't right; I have bee-balm, queen-anne's lace, ox-eyed daisies, black-eyed susans, butterfly weed, butterfly bush and other assorted species blooming everywhere. Not one butterfly.

Nothing was to be found except for one single Black & Yellow Lichen Moth. That was it. The bee population seems low to me also. I have a few of the small bumble bees on my tomatoes and I can see about a dozen or so honey bees on the white clover that is my lawn. No great numbers of either. As they would say in Alabama; "something just ain't right".
The Butterflies Of West Virginia and their Caterpillars (Pitt Series in Nature and Natural History)

Posted by High Virginia Outdoors     Photos by High Virginia Images

1 comment:

  1. I have also noticed a drop in numbers as far as the monarch butterfly goes. Cabbage whites are here and also the swallowtails. One noticeable absence here seem to be hornets. We have bumbles and the smaller bees and those teeny tiny little ones you can hardly see (not sure of their name).

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