Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

The butterfly count, held on August 6th this year, started out as touch-and-go. In the days leading up to the count, the weather forecast got grimmer and grimmer with it ultimately being “cloudy and a 70% chance of thunderstorms.” Now, if we were doing amphibian monitoring, that would have been a terrific forecast but butterflies prefer temperatures in the high 70s at least and they don’t fly in the rain.

As morning broke though, the cloud cover was high so we were hopeful.  Eight teams, with 59 people, gathered at their meeting spots a little before 9am.  It was still cool at that time, around 75 degrees, and with the exception of the Blue Ridge Center, the morning had a slow start.

By about 10am, the butterflies were showing up. The cloud cover and slight breeze made for a more comfortable day than we’ve seen in past years and temperatures reached the mid-80s – perfect for butterflies!  But where were they? 

Across the board numbers were down. In terms of diversity, we had 43 species (compared to 47-49 in past years) but it was the number of individual butterflies that was profound, as we recorded just 2312 individuals. This is the lowest count we’ve seen since 2004 and a huge departure from the last two years where we saw well over 4,000 individuals each count. 

While numbers were low across the board, we especially noticed that the swallowtails, fritillaries and sulphurs were almost absent in locations where they are typically seen and in general their numbers seemed to be cut in half.  Monarchs were low at just 52, compared to 193 in 2009 and 82 in 2010.

The Red-banded hairstreak was higher than in past years and the American Copper showed up at a couple of different locations, giving many participants a “lifer”. The Common Buckeye, Eastern-tailed Blue, Silver Spotted Skipper, Dun Skipper and Zabulon Skipper all had healthy numbers on par with past years.

All in all, a nice day for the count but the lack of butterflies has had a lot of us asking what happened? We didn’t have the best day for the count with the cloud cover but it was warm enough that the butterflies would have been out if they were around and the showy swallowtails could not have been missed. 

It all comes down to weather and habitat for butterflies.  The cool spring with its rain storms may have been too much for the adults to handle. That, followed by the heat we had through July, may have made it so the caterpillars/chrysalids couldn’t survive or develop. 

In the weeks leading up to the count, I scoured the listservs and across the country fellow butterfly counters were reporting low numbers and asked the same questions we did. I just wondered if our count would bear out the same truths, and it did.

What are the butterflies telling us on a national level? In the fall, the North American Butterfly Association, where we submit our data, will have the national data compiled. It will be interesting to see the conclusions they draw.

You can view our Loudoun County data from 1997-2011 on our website: http://www.loudounwildlife.org/Butterfly_Count_Summary_Data.htm

Our thanks go out to everyone who participated in the count this year! We couldn’t have done it without you!

If you missed the count this year, mark your calendars now for next year! We hold it on the first Saturday every August.

We’re gearing up for our 15th Annual Loudoun County Butterfly Count and would love to have you join us!

The count takes place on the first Saturday in August each year – so this year it falls on Saturday, August 6th.  We start at 9:00 a.m. by meeting up in our teams at designated meeting spots and we count throughout the day, visiting gardens, sanctuaries and wild roadside locations all within our count circle.

You can participate for the whole day or just part of the day – your choice – but we could sure use your help on a team!

To learn more about the annual butterfly count, see past years data and sign up, visit our Butterfly Count webpage.

Hope you will join us!  All experience levels are welcome!

Here we go….it’s our 15th year of counting butterflies in Loudoun!  It’s pretty amazing and it’s a great way to both learn identification tips for new butterflies and hone identification skills on butterflies you know.

Each year we hold the count, we encounter anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 butterflies, across more than 40 species, in this one day of counting!  If we’re going to count that many butterflies again this year, we need your help! You can sign up online.

To organize the count, we use a count circle that we divide into sectors. We have team leaders that are responsible for covering specific sectors and when you sign up, we’ll assign you to a team (or you can let us know if there’s a specific team/area in the circle where you’d like to count).

It’s really a great day and is such a great way to contribute to the collection of data on butterfly populations!

International Migratory Bird Day is just 10 days away! We’ve lined up a number of wonderful birding forays across Loudoun County and we’d love to have you join us!

International Migratory Bird Day is  held on the second Saturday in May in the U.S. and Canada and in October in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean each year and it’s a day where we celebrate and bring attention to one of the most important and spectacular events in the Americas – bird migration.

Millions of birds – large and small, having wintered in points south, are returning both to our area and points north to breed and continue the cycle of life.

The photo in this post was taken at Horsepen Preserve in Cascades during our IMBD walk there a few years ago. It is of a White-eyed Vireo that Stan Shetler, our walk leader, pointed out and helped us all get good views of as it foraged through the trees.

By standing witness to this great event, we not only learn about and engage in this continued heartbeat of our natural world, but also gather and report data on the specific species that travel through or breed in our area, thereby contributing to bird conservation.

I hope you’ll join us on one of our many walks on International Migratory Bird Day – it’s a wonderful day of sharing knowledge and building friendships.  You’ll encounter birds you know and new ones that have just flown in! Each of our walks is led by experienced birders so it’s a great opportunity for beginners and veterans alike.

Visit our Loudoun County IMBD page for more information and sign up.

This is a story about  a bird named Hope.  It isn’t a story about a bird in Loudoun, so I’m straying a tad, but it’s an amazing story that indeed could be that of any number of birds that are migrating into and through Loudoun at this very moment, on their epic journeys that link continents, habitats and cultures. In May, we will celebrate International Migratory Bird Day, and linkages that give us Hope.

Here is her story:

(Williamsburg, VA)—The odyssey of Hope, a whimbrel carrying a  satellite transmitter, continues to amaze scientists.  Hope was originally captured on 19 May, 2009 on the southern Delmarva Peninsula of Virginia.  She left Virginia on May 26 and since that time has logged more than 21,000 miles (33,000 kilometers) flying between a breeding territory on the MacKenzie River near Alaska and a winter territory on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  On Friday (8 April, 2011), Hope returned to Virginia following a 75 hour, 1,850 mile (2,900 kilometer) flight out over the Atlantic Ocean.
 
During the course of two full migration cycles, Hope has clearly demonstrated how distant locations are interconnected in the life of migratory species and how their conservation requires collaboration on a multi-national scale. 

For three consecutive springs, Hope has returned to the same creek in Virginia where she has fed on fiddler crabs preparing for a transcontinental flight to her breeding grounds.  The creek, located in the  the Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve,  is part of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network, a network of international sites considered critical to  populations of declining shorebirds. 

Hope’s breeding grounds on the MacKenzie River are part of an International Important Bird Area and  one of the areas of highest conservation value in Canada.  Efforts  are ongoing to protect the area considered by many to be one of the most pristine watersheds remaining in North America. 

For the past 2  years, Hope has wintered at Great Pond, a Birdlife International Important Bird Area on St. Croix.  Protection of long-distance migrants like Hope requires that countries recognize the importance of vulnerable populations and work together toward effective conservation solutions.
 
Hope is one of several birds that have been fitted with state of the  art 9.5-gram, satellite transmitters in a collaborative effort by the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary – Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia Coast Reserve of  The Nature Conservancy to discover migratory routes that connect breeding and winter areas and to identify en route migratory staging areas that are critical to the conservation of this declining species.

Updated tracking maps may be viewed online.

http://www.ccb-wm.org/programs/migration/Whimbrel/whimbrel.htm
 
Satellite tracking represents only one aspect of a broader, integrated investigation of whimbrel migration.  During the past 4 years, the Center for Conservation in partnership with The Nature Conservancy has used conventional transmitters to examine stopover duration, conducted aerial surveys to estimate seasonal numbers, collected feather samples to locate summer and winter areas through stable-isotope analysis, and has initiated a whimbrel watch program.  Continued research is planned to further link populations across staging, breeding, and wintering areas. Funding has been provided by The Nature Conservancy, the Center for Conservation Biology, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, The Toronto Ornithological Club, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, and the Northern Neck Audubon Society.

Come out for a fun afternoon to learn about our stream monitoring program!

Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy will host a stream monitoring training event on Sunday, May 1, at the Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve Education Annex.  

The training session will consist of classroom instruction on macroinvertebrate identification from 2-4 pm and then field instruction on the monitoring protocol from 4-6 pm.  

Please consider joining us for one or both parts of the training.  

This is not a certification event but will cover everything you need to know to become a certified stream monitor.  The classroom portion of the training will focus heavily on macroinvertebrate identification and should be helpful to people of all experience levels.

Visit our May calendar for more information and events.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers a really nice citizen science project called Nest Watch.  It’s easy to jump into and the information you gather can also be a great help to our Loudoun County Bird Atlas.

Birds across the country are pairing up and starting to nest! If you keep a close lookout while they do, you can find nests right in your own neighborhood and watch as birds raise their young. Share your observations with the Cornell Lab’s NestWatch project to help scientists learn more about the nesting success of birds. To participate in this free project, visit NestWatch.org.

You’ll learn how to find nests, how to safely monitor them, and how to record your data so scientists can learn from what you see. Get started today.

Here’s the latest news on our Loudoun County Bird Atlas project:

As we enter our third breeding season, we’ll be completing several blocks and beginning to cover new ones.  In both cases, it’s helpful to have access to private property, which can provide excellent habitat for target species.    

If you have property that has rich bird habitat and are willing to let us visit it for the bird atlas, please contact our Bord Atlas coordinator, Spring Ligi: sligi@loudounwildlife.org.  All landowners will be recognized and thanked in the final publication of atlas results.

March Highlights

1.  An atlaser was treated to a Common Redpoll on his property in the Bluemont 4 area…a rare visitor for Loudoun!

2.  Barn Owl and Woodcocks heard in the Round Hill 4 block.  Displaying Woodcocks also observed in the Middleburg area.

3.  Rusty blackbirds observed at Algonkian Park and the Arcola 2 block.

Atlas Progress

64 enthusiastic atlasers have spent 2,475 hours in the field documenting 26,750 sightings. You have recorded 228 species, with 97 of these species having a confirmed nesting status. Field cards have been reported for 43 blocks and 3 blocks are considered “complete”.

This just in from Christopher S. Hobson, VA DCR – Division of Natural Heritage:

 The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation – Division of Natural Heritage (DCR-DNH), with funding from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is developing an atlas of the rare dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies, skippers, and moths in the state (see below).

The final product, a series of 193 species fact sheets and county occurrence maps, will be made available to the general public, naturalists and scientists on a web site. We have two years to develop the database from field work, museum records, literature citations, and with your help and input, personal communications from area naturalists.

We would appreciate your assistance in any way, particularly with the following two tasks.
First, if you are still active in the field, we ask that you keep an eye out for the species we are interested in (see list below) and report them to us?

Second, we ask that you read through the species list and send us any records that you may already have from Virginia.

In both cases, the more information you can send (date of observation, location, numbers observed, habitat conditions, etc.) the more complete our records will be. Photographic vouchering would be appreciated if possible.

If you have any population information, for example you return to a site every year, or you make observations throughout the flight season of a particular species, that would be useful information.

Written accounts would be best and could be in the form of copies of field notes, emails, letters, photos, etc. Inclusion of maps indicating the exact location and/or latitude and longitude coordinates would be most useful.

In addition to the internet product, where county level information will be made available, the information you provide about most of these species will be added to the Virginia Natural Heritage Program’s database and used to inform conservation decisions such as our environmental review process, potential land acquisition, and management plans. If you are hesitant to reveal some locations, we can indicate that the information is ‘sensitive’ and limit access to the information.

We cannot complete this project adequately without help and input from the naturalist community. I hope you will take some time to read through the list of species and consider how you might participate in this project. Please feel free to contact me [Chris Hobson] via phone (804) 371-6202 or email Chris.Hobson@dcr.virginia.gov if you have questions, or if you have information that can be useful in completing this atlas project.

We had our last of three amphibian monitoring program kickoffs this past Saturday.  This one was held at Algonkian Regional Park and it held some really great sightings!

To start the morning, Casey Pittrizzi, the naturalist at Algonkian Regional Park, let everyone have up close looks at a Wood Frog, Spotted Salamander, American Toad and Gray Tree Frog, that NVRPA has temporarily for education purposes. This was a great way to start off the program and start learning about our amphibians!

After our classroom session, where I basically gave everyone the run down on the different habitats amphibians use (forests and wetlands) and talked through the 25 different species we have here in Loudoun, we headed out into the field. [check out the photo album]

Our first stop was the little man-made pools at the mini-golf course.  To our excitement, we spotted numerous strings of American Toad eggs. 

That was special since we haven’t really heard the toads calling yet but they have obviously had an opportunity to get to the pools for breeding.

We also saw spotted salamander egg masses and hundreds of wood frog tadpoles, already hatched from their eggs.  We also spotted a newt in one of the pools, possibly eating frog or toad eggs.

From there, we headed out along the trails to look at the different wetland habitats – both vernal pools and swamp areas.

Here, we found an adult American Toad, obviously very cold and still in hibernation.  We also did a little dip netting and found lots of FAIRY SHRIMP! This is an obligate species for vernal pools and is only the second documented occurrence here in Loudoun.

Many thanks to all the participants for being a part of the day and to all the new volunteers for jumping in to the amphibian monitoring program this year!

Algonkian Regional Park is definitely one of our great places here in Loudoun.  Casey has some fun nature hikes and other programs lined up through the spring and summer, and we look forward to partnering on more events together!