Copper Tales

Last week Alan and I set off for Lake City in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, on a butterfly expedition with our good friend Noel Snyder. For two years, Noel has been daydreaming of Tailed Coppers, ever since I found them along Henson Creek on an earlier trip. So, naturally, the first day found us exploring Henson Creek in search of Tailed Coppers and their flighty relatives. And coppers we found!

Two views of a Tailed Copper

Mixed in with the Tailed and Ruddy Coppers were quite a few Coral Hairstreaks, a species I had only seen previously in Missouri.

Coral Hairstreak on composite

Most were nectaring at composites, which flourished along the roadside with Colorado Columbine, wild rose, geraniums, and the familiar, wonderful Common Fireweed, its soft purple blossoms blending so beautifully with the blue-green of its foliage.

Henson Creek originates in the 13- and 14,000-foot peaks of the San Juans, and rushes down to join the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River. Here I spent many months of my childhood, in this quintessential country of the high Rocky Mountains. The main changes in the intervening decades have been the level of use for recreation––now very high indeed!––and the proliferation of second homes, where once only wild strawberries cloaked the hillsides. Returning here is bittersweet. But masses of flowers still riot in the high country, chipmunks scamper away at every bend of the road, Prairie Falcons still hunt the tundra, and Uncompahgre is still lord of the high peaks of southwestern Colorado.

Common Fireweed

(All photos by Narca)

And, yes, the old-fashioned soda fountain still operates in the town of Lake City, and though it now is a gift store rather than a general store, the ice cream remains outstanding. My grandfather being partial to ice cream, we often stopped here in the 1950s and 1960s for chocolate milk shakes after an evening of boisterous square dancing or an exhilarating day of jeeping or fly-fishing.

Pity Alan and Noel! They are about to be subjected to endless tales of mother lodes and miner's lore, of Lynx and Mountain Sheep, of our inner-tubing club––the Blue-bottomed Butt-busters––with its initiation rite of a 10-mile tubing trip in the icy waters of the Lake Fork of the Gunnison. The Lake Fork has a chance to warm up ever-so-slightly, because its waters are held in the natural lake of San Cristobal. First innner-tubers adjust to that, then when Henson Creek converges with the Lake Fork, they are slammed with another icy blast as the water temperature drops even further, to 52º! Yes, Lake City....

Tomorrow we seek our long-sought-after grail butterfly, the Lustrous Copper!

Scuttling Scorpions!

Have you ever tried hunting for scorpions at night using an ultraviolet light? They fluoresce! Here is a scorpion near Portal, at night under the "normal" illumination of a camera flash:

(Photos by Narca)

And here is the same beast under a UV light:

Quite impressive. That led me to the question of why they glow an eerie green under UV light, and google came through again. An unidentified substance in the scorpion's cuticle causes the fluorescence. When they have just molted, they don't glow. The fluorescence increases as the cuticle hardens.

One notion is that the fluorescent layer functions as a UV sensor. Indeed, the scorpions that I found reacted to the UV flashlight by trying to hide from it.

Amazingly, this very tough fluorescent layer is preserved in fossils––and the fossils of scorpions fluoresce as well!

While Helen Waited

Our technique on the Short-tailed Hawk vigils has been to split up and watch from different vantage points. Helen and Noel have stayed in contact with handheld radios. We've each had marvelous encounters with wildlife.

Yesterday, the hours passed quickly for Helen, who found no end of entertainment with this family of Cliff Chipmunks.

Cliff Chipmunk family (Photo by Helen Snyder)

She wrote, "These little guys were at exactly the same stage of innocence as the young Short-tail on the other side of the ridge. On Saturday I watched him charging around the outside of a pine tree, snatching at terminal clusters of needles or pine cones––a crazy zig-zaggy dash that took him about 10 seconds, during which time he snatched maybe six times at imaginary prey."

How rich are these mountains, and how rich the hours we spend there!

The Monsoon vs Our Driveway

Yes! 

What a wonderful sight.

Waiting for the Short-tails

A wait can be most engrossing. Today I returned to the Barfoot ridges in the Chiricahuas with Cathie Sandell, Christopher Rustay, and Noel and Helen Snyder, again watching for those two young Short-tailed Hawks and their parents. (Incorrigible, you say?)

At the very start of our vigil, Christopher spotted a fledgling Short-tail flying to a snag on a nearby ridge, prey clutched in its left talons. The buffy youngster perched for awhile, gazing around at the wide world, with no attempt to eat the prey it was carrying. Eventually the young hawk flew, and that was the last we saw of Short-tails for the day.

Pine Satyr, in the U.S. only found in the Chiricahua and Huachuca Mountains (Photos by Narca)

However, it was only the start of an interesting wait, high on the ridge. Hilltopping butterflies––Colorado Hairstreaks, Pine Satyrs, duskywings, cloudywings, sulphurs, blues, Weidemeyer's Admirals––lit in the Gambel's Oak and nectared at Penstemon.

In the U.S. Mexican Chickadees only inhabit Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains and New Mexico's Animas Mountains.

Eventually I wandered farther up the trail (although "trail" may be overstating it!) and found a good vantage point for a closer view of a ridge where the Short-tails like to perch. Several large, lichen-draped snags below my feet were home to a bustling family of Red-breasted Nuthatches, a pair of House Wrens, a family of Yellow-eyed Juncos, and the occasional Mexican Chickadee.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Young Yellow-eyed Junco

As I hiked back, a sudden insect-like buzz announced the presence of a Twin-spotted Rattlesnake. The species is very rare in the US, and the Barfoot region is known for harboring one of the finest populations. Indeed, we hope that the Coronado National Forest plan will grant their habitat here some additional level of protection.

Twin-spotted Rattlesnake

And still we wait for the Short-tails...

Emergence

Yesterday Alan and I joined Helen and Noel Snyder for a Short-tailed Hawk vigil above Barfoot Park in the Chiricahua Mountains, and along the way we were distracted by a splendidly-colored Colorado Hairstreak, just emerged from its chrysalis and attempting to expand its wings.

Emerging Colorado Hairstreak (Photos by Narca)

The hairstreak is very scarce this far south, and I had never seen one before. Its host plant is usually Gambel's Oak, which thrives at higher elevations in the Chiricahuas. What a glorious butterfly!

Batman pose

A Lingering Scaup

On Tuesday, July 6, Alan discovered a summering female scaup (!) at Willow Tank near Portal. Scaup identification is often challenging, and in this case we have an additional handicap: she is mostly flightless, probably due to wing molt, so we can't flush her. Therefore, the length of the white wing stripe––one of the few good field marks––hasn't been available to use.

Female scaup at Willow Tank (Photos by Narca)

So... is she a Greater or a Lesser Scaup? This scaup is showing some ambiguous markings. She has the tiniest hint of a white cheek patch, which female Greater Scaup can develop rather strongly in summer. But a whitish cheek patch isn't a diagnostic mark.

The shape of her head appeared good for Lesser Scaup in Alan's photos, yet when another birder studied her, he thought that the head shape seemed flatter and rounder. (He agreed that the shape in Alan's photos looked better for Lesser.) When I saw her, some head feathers seemed matted down, while others were dry and puffy, distorting the head shape––as you can see in these photos.

Her bill does seem more delicate and narrower than a Greater should show.

My favorite field mark can be tough to see. It's the width of the nail on the bill, and can require a very careful look, in good light. So on Wednesday Alan and I headed to Willow Tank, with scope in tow. The early morning light was exquisite, and eventually we routed the scaup from her cover in the waterweeds, and she swam to the center of the pond, where it was finally possible to see that the nail on her bill was narrow. Lesser Scaup. (And true––Lesser is by far the more common species in Arizona. Yet in early July neither should be here!)

Female Lesser Scaup at Willow Tank

What in the world is she doing in southeast Arizona in summer? Did an injury prevent her migration?

A postscript... she did finally fly for Jon Dunn and his WINGS group, confirming Lesser Scaup. This bird was tricky, though––Jon said that his first thought was "Why isn't this a Greater?"