Butte County Butterflies

By Katie Jones

I've collected butterflies for 4 years. My mom and I would find butterflies that had flown into car windshields, bring them home, and identify them using a book from the library. My dad got me a butterfly-collecting kit, and then I started on a real collection. At first, my dad caught the butterflies and identified them, but as I got older I started catching some myself. We are still catching new butterflies and buying new equipment today, and now I catch about half of our combined total.

Right now, I have six boxes of butterflies, but only about 4½ full ones. I have the smallest butterfly in the world, the Pygmy Blue, and the largest butterfly around Chico, the Two-Tailed Swallowtail. There are several families of butterflies. Most have a good number of butterflies, but a couple have only one species.

The family with the larger butterflies is Papilionidae. This group includes Swallowtails and Parnassians. The Parnassians are usually higher up in the mountains, but we have Swallowtails here.

The Swallowtails have 'tails' on their hind wings. These are very noticeable while the butterfly is at rest. There is the Pipevine Swallowtail, which is very common, the Western Tiger Swallowtail, which is about as common, and the Two-Tailed Swallowtail, which is the largest butterfly in Chico. The Pipevine is a large, iridescent black butterfly. The Western Tiger Swallowtail is about the same size, but yellow with a little black. The Two-Tailed Swallowtail is a yellow butterfly, but with less black than the Western Tiger and bigger than the other two butterflies. It also has two tails on either hind wing instead of one, as its name suggests.

The family with the smallest butterfly is Lycaenidae. This includes Hairstreaks, Copper, and Blues. These are very small butterflies, and are hard to identify. There are many different species, and I will only name a few. There is a small gray butterfly known as the Common Hairstreak. These have small `tails' on their hind wings, and the Lycaenidaes rub their hind wings back and forth against each other when at rest. There is a coppery-purplish butterfly called the Purplish Copper. The purple color is more of an iridescent sheen over the copper color. There are two common blues, the Acmon Blue and the Western Tailed Blue. The Acmon Blue is bright blue, with a line of orange dots along its hind wings. The Western Tailed Blue is blue, but not as bright blue as the Acmon. It has two tiny tails on its hind wings, but no orange.

Nymphalidae has several medium-sized butterflies. The more common ones include the Painted Lady, West Coast Lady, California Tortoiseshell, Mourning Cloak, Buckeye, Red Admiral, and the Common Checkerspot. The Painted Lady is very fast. It is brown and orange. The West Coast Lady is smaller than the Painted Lady, and it has blue spots on the hind wing. It is also slower. The California Tortoiseshell is orange brown over the top, but the underside is like tree bark. These live more in shadowy places. The Mourning Cloak is brown all over, except along the outer wing edges. These have cream, with a few blue spots. The Buckeye is brown, with several other colors, but the main thing is that it has two large spots on its hind wings. They look like the spots on a peacock's tail. The Red Admiral is black, with stripes on its four wings and white spots on the tips of its forewings. The Common Checkerspot is black, with white spots all over the wings and orange edges.

Danaidae has only one butterfly that lives here. This is the Monarch. It is a large orange butterfly striped with black. This is the butterfly people tend to think of when speaking of butterflies, but it is an oddity. It is poisonous, because its young eat milkweed. It is the only member of its family that lives here. And it migrates, which is unusual for butterflies.

Satyridae has two butterflies that live here, but they are very similar. They are the California and Ringless Ringlets. Ringlets fly low and erratically, and they tend to land in tall grass, making it hard to see them. If you do get a good look at them, though, they are both yellowy-gray. The Ringless Ringlet has fewer or no tiny `rings' on the hind wing. The California has a few more spots, but they are very hard to tell apart.

Pieridaehas butterflies are in between Satyridae and Nymphalidae size. There are three common ones. The Cabbage Butterfly, the Orange Sulpher, and the Sara Orange-Tip. The Cabbage butterfly is white, with a few black spots. It is very common, as is the Orange Sulpher. This butterfly is yellow-orange, with a black outline over the edge of the wings and a red dot on each hind wing. There is a white Alba form, but these are not very common. The Sara Orange-Tip is white, with a vivid orange wing tip on the forewings.

Hesperiidae has four small, quick butterflies. One is a little orange butterfly with a little bit of dark brown on it. This is called the Fiery Skipper. The next butterfly is almost identical. It is called the Field Skipper, and it has a little more brown than the Fiery Skipper does. There are two "dusky-wings" that are also hard to tell apart. The dark brown Mournful Dusky-wing has a thin white fringe along its hind wings. The Persius Dusky-wing has a fringe too, but it is brown, like the rest of the wings.

I use a jar with cotton in the bottom to kill the butterflies. I pour ethyl alcohol into the jar and put on the top. The fumes kill the butterflies quickly and painlessly. I mount them at a uniform height on a mounting pin and label them. I put them in the proper butterfly grouping and I'm done. All the butterflies mentioned here are included in my butterfly booklet, Butterflies of the Annie Bidwell Trail.

Editors Note: The butterfly booklet is available from Katie Jones, 5 Summerwood Court, Chico CA 95926 for $1.00. Katie is 12 years old.

From the Spring 2001 issue of the Environmental News.