Butterfly hunters checking out a buckeye
at Allerton Park.
 

  Field Trip Report:  Allerton Park
August 14, 2004

Sixteen people enjoyed butterflying in some wonderful weather on Saturday's trip to beautiful Allerton Park near Monticello, IL.   In total, we saw 22 species of butterflies and skippers.  Highlights included some gorgeous gray hairstreaks, a friendly buckeye, a giant swallowtail, mating silver-spotted skippers, a monarch caterpillar and a very large wolf spider.  Good looks at both a viceroy and many monarchs allowed a nice comparison between the mimic and the model of this pair of similar-looking butterflies.  Much thanks to Eric Smith of IDNR for helping us at Allerton and arranging a visit to a private site nearby that had loads of swamp milkweed and boneset!  

Our total species list is as follows:  black swallowtail, giant swallowtail, clouded sulphur, orange sulphur, cloudless sulphur, little yellow, cabbage white, gray hairstreak, eastern tailed blue, hackberry emperor, red spotted purple, viceroy, buckeye, painted lady, pearl crescent, monarch, silver-spotted skipper, common sootywing, tawny-edged skipper, Delaware skipper, least skipper, little glassywing.

*If anyone wants to provide more complete identification or corrections for any of the below insects,
feel free to contact the club by email*

All photos copyright  P.V. Switzer.  No use without permission.

 

Buckeye

Note the curled edges to its wings; this may have been a newly emerged individual.
     
Another picture of the same buckeye
     
Eastern tailed blue

This individual was  "puddling" on wet mud.
   
Orange sulphur

    
Mating silver-spotted skippers.  

Amazingly enough, they can fly like this!
    Hackberry emperor

  

Least skipper
 


Viceroy

Note the chunk missing out of its hindwings - even though some bird wasn't fooled, this lucky bug still got away
  

Gray hairstreak
 

Common sootywing

   
Monarch caterpillar on swamp milkweed
  

Tawny-edged skipper
  

Pearl crescent
 

Wolf spider
Black swallowtail caterpillar

This individual was crossing the road -- in this case, the answer to "Why did the caterpillar cross the road?" is probably "Because it was looking for a place to pupate."


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