This has been a very good year for butterflies, both in terms of numbers and in terms of diversity.  The consistent warmth and relative dryness has helped their populations.  And for this year’s Rochester count we covered more areas, and had more knowledgeable area leaders.  The combination of factors led to us smashing our previous records.

We saw 41 species of butterfly – breaking our previous high of 31 species.  We saw 4 new species, bringing our composite 9 year total to 53 species!  The new species were Acadian Hairstreak, Gray Hairstreak, Silvery Checkerspot, and Gray Comma.  Also new this year was the number of species documented with digital photographs – it is the way of the future!

We had high counts for 12 species, and tied the previous high for 3 others.  Especially notable were large numbers of Monarchs (227), Eastern Tailed Blue (223) and Red Admirals (145).  And although not as numerous, we had unusually high counts for American Coppers (22), Edwards Hairstreaks (13) and Common Buckeyes (26).

We saw a total of 1240 individual butterflies (excluding 6 caterpillars and 2 eggs spotted by younger folks with good eyes) easily breaking our previous high of 1022 in 2001.

Thanks to Bill Bruins, Nora Dooley, Terry and Joyce Grier, and Greg Munson for independently covering areas and leading novices.

If you would like a detailed spreadsheet of the count data, let me know.  The species count information is available here.

The 2008 count will be on July 12.  Put it on your calendar now!