New Year, New Challenge

[Updated to clarify sightings must be AFTER January 1, 2023. Cut-and-paste is the nightmare of editors]

It’s barely six weeks now in the mid-Atlantic until we can be confident of seeing early spring butterflies, so it must be time to launch our own East coast version of Art Shapiro’s Cabbage White Contest.

In the past we’ve had a challenge here at LepLog that recognized first butterfly, first azure, first Mourning Cloak, first anglewing trio, and other contests. This year the challenge is the Falcate Foray!

The Falcate Foray will reward the first set of BOTH male and female Falcate Orangetip. Rules are as usual for this contest:

1.      All butterflies must be live adults seen in the wild (i.e., not from chrysalids brought indoors to emerge).  Netted adults in hand are acceptable.

2.     All butterflies must be seen in Maryland, Delaware, DC or the Northern Virginia counties of Loudon, Fairfax, or Prince William.

3.     All butterflies must be photodocumented and submitted as a set to rborchelt@gmail.com.  This isn’t a photo contest, photos only need to be clear enough for positive ID.

4.     The order in which they are seen/documented doesn’t matter.

5.     All observations must be made after January 1, 2023.  The first complete set submitted (as certified by the time stamp on the email) will be declared the winner. 

The 2023 Falcate Foray winner will receive a copy of Jessica Speart’s “Winged Obsession: The Pursuit of the World’s Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler.”

So, cameras to the ready! Males reliably take wing in our area the last week of March; females a week to 10 days later.