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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

In all shapes & sizes

A recent walk on a forest road reveals an abundance of spectacular summer butterflies

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 7/19/17

One of the best parts about exploring the backroads of our area is that you never know what you’ll find. Everyday, it’s something new. Just last week, it was a flutter of butterflies that caught …

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In all shapes & sizes

A recent walk on a forest road reveals an abundance of spectacular summer butterflies

Posted

One of the best parts about exploring the backroads of our area is that you never know what you’ll find. Everyday, it’s something new. Just last week, it was a flutter of butterflies that caught my eye. Yes, a “flutter” is one of those official names for a grouping of butterflies, just as a group of crows is known as a “murder” and a flock of owls is known as a “parliament.”

Like a lot of forest roads this time of year, the wildflowers were pretty sparse, but that didn’t seem to bother all the butterflies, which clearly had other food sources on their minds. While we often associate butterflies, (insects of the order Lepidoptera), with flowers and nectar, only some butterflies actually feed on flowers and many of those rely more frequently on other food sources.

Indeed, to a Northern Pearly-Eye, few foods are as enticing as a pile of fresh wolf scat, and it was just such a pile, covered with a half dozen of these common forest butterflies that initially drew my attention to this lepidopteran bonanza. Pearly-Eyes are one of a number of “eyed” butterfly and moth species. Butterflies, particularly medium-to-large species, are generally easy to spot and relatively slow moving, which would normally make them vulnerable to predators. But they have developed a number of defenses, including mimicry, either of butterfly species, such as monarchs, that taste bad, or by growing large fake eyes on their wings that confuse potential predators.

Northern Pearly-Eyes rarely, if ever, visit flowers, relying instead on animal scat, carrion, and mineral-rich mud puddles— hardly the fare we normally associate with butterflies.

On this same road, I found several other butterflies, most of which paid no attention to the few scattered wildflowers. A portion of the trail passed through a boggy area and that’s where I found most of the butterflies, including a yellow swallowtail feeding on Labrador tea flowers. Most of the other butterflies were more interested in sipping moisture up from the road’s gravel surface. Fortunately, I had my camera and another Outdoors centerpiece was soon in the making.