Observation of the week – August 3 to 9
Hello butterfly enthusiasts. Our 2020 Butterfly Blitz passed a milestone on the weekend – we reached 61 species observed so far this year, which is one more than was found in our 2019 project! Amazing!
Thank you so much everyone for all your efforts in getting outside and reporting the butterflies you see. There is still over a month left in the 2020 Butterfly Blitz, so there are many more opportunities for you to add to our project.
In the meantime, we’d like to tell you about our 10th OOTW – an Eastern Tailed Blue seen by participant @ejankowski. Eugene (aka @ejankowski) is new to butterflies this year and has been taking some very nice photos of butterflies all over the province. I like how you can see both the upper and under sides of the Eastern Tailed Blue’s wings in this photo, as well as its beautiful black and white antennae.
This Eastern Tailed Blue was seen at the end of a butterflying trip to the Elora Cataract Trail, as Eugene and a friend were heading back to the car. Eugene says: “We had seen the species on the previous Sunday on Pelee Island so we recognized it immediately.”
The Eastern Tailed Blue is one of the butterfly species in our area that is like that – once you identify one, you feel pretty confident in identifying the next one you see. They are more common now than they were earlier in the summer, so keep your eye out if you haven’t seen one already. You might find one in an old field, in your backyard, or even on a roadside like Eugene did.
While you’re out there looking for blues, keep your eyes open for a recently introduced species – the European Common Blue. The first Canadian sighting of this European butterfly was in the Montreal area in 2005, and the first ones in the Toronto area were only seen last year. So far there has not been an observation of the European Common Blue in the Credit River Watershed, but it may very well be here.
The European Common Blue looks superficially similar to the Eastern Tailed Blue, but there are some important differences. Compared to the Eastern Tailed Blue, the underside of the European Common Blue’s wings have way more orange spots and are a brownish background colour vs. the grayish of the Eastern Tailed Blue. Also key is that the European Common Blue does not have a ‘tail’ coming off of its hind wings. You can see pictures at this link .
These days, the first detections of introduced species are commonly made by citizen scientists using platforms like iNaturalist. Whether it’s a species like the European Common Blue that may not have much ecological impact, or one like the Spotted Lanternfly that has the potential to be very damaging, data collected by people like you getting outside and recording what you see can be very important.
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