We took a trip out to the Watuppa Reservation area in Fall River today. It was a fantastic day to be out. Sunny, mid 70’s or more and just a bit of a breeze.
Our main target species were Hessel’s Hairstreaks. Their host plant, the Eastern White Cedar is in the area so we had hoped they would be as well. Whenever looking for Hessel’s in MA, it isn’t a matter of “we’re going out to find Hessel’s”, but more of “we are going out to an area they should be, but probably won’t be”.
But try, we did. And long story short, once again fail, we did.
Not all was lost though. At first I took us to the wrong area, but there was a powerline cut and those are almost always interesting. This one had several flowering blueberry bushes which are generally butterfly magnets this early in the season. I did find a few nice ones nectaring on them, but nothing TOO special. 3 Eastern Pine Elfins and several Azures.
Everything seems to like the blueberry. Several bumblebees and wasps were also on them.
I even ran into a mound of Allegheny Mound Ants which I hadn’t seen since my days of working on the military base on Cape Cod. These things are nasty little bastards, but super cool.
Well, I decided to turn around and walk the powerline down to where I knew we found some fun butterflies last year. Along the way, I found what was (I thought) a bit strange. Seemingly, two different forms of Spring Azure mating. It looks to me that one is form lucia and the other is possibly marginata?
At one point, the path ends and it turns into a swampy area. Since I could see where I needed to go about 100 yards or so ahead, I decided (one of my worst decisions in a while) to go through the swampy area to get there. Well… I won’t do that again. I would say that I made it about 3/4 of the way, but not before ending up to my knee of my left leg in some serious muck with every pull up of my leg making it sink further in. I did eventually free myself, but began wondering if I would run into the skeletons of those less fortunate than myself. I ended up turning around and getting out of there.
From there, we ended up driving down to the area we were in last year. This year was a bit different from a butterfly species perspective. Last year, I had a White-M hairstreak. This year there weren’t any in this area but one was seen in the previously mentioned, incorrect area. There were several Azures here though, and a Henry’s Elfin which is always fun.
Anyways, at this spot, my wife also found a Red-spotted Purple caterpillar on black cherry which is always a fun find.
Other than these few species and a couple of Juvenal’s Duskywings (pictured at top), not much else was found today. It was a great day to be out and about though!
Our Natural Adventures 