Date: 10/26/26 3:23 pm From: Harry LeGrand (via carolinabirds Mailing List) <carolinabirds...> Subject: Some butterflies in western Raleigh, Wake Co., NC -- Oct. 26
Folks,
I waited out the NC State Fair for 11 days (Oct. 15-25) so that parking and travel in western Raleigh would be back to normal. As the weather has been a broken record for the last 5-6 months -- hardly any clouds, mild temps now (upper 60s), and light wind with sunburn potential -- I tried out the NC Art Museum grounds from about 1-2 pm. The Frost Asters are in full bloom and cover many hundreds of square yards near the sculpture hill area and the musical swings, but I estimated barely 1 butterfly for every 10 ,000 flowers! Here are my disappointing totals, clearly a "casualty" of the year-long drought.
Sleepy Orange 6 CLOUDED SULPHUR 1 beautiful and fresh, infrequent here Orange Sulphur 5 also fresh Cloudless Sulphur 1 Cabbage White 1 infrequent here Monarch 2 Variegated Fritillary 5 Common Buckeye 6 Common Checkered-Skipper 35 surprisingly numerous Fiery Skipper 20
Sadly, I missed "gimmes" like Pearl Crescent, Clouded Skipper, and maybe Ocola Skipper. I could not find a Southern Skipperling around the hill, nor at the nearby State Fair offsite parking lot where it has been common up to a few weeks ago. I'll check out Raulston Arboretum either tomorrow or Wednesday at midday or early afternoon, as I have not been there since before the Fair opened on Oct. 15. As the staff water the plants there, and there are plantings of Lantana and a good variety of other nectar plants, I hope to do better there, as long as the plants haven't been uprooted for the season!
