Ron's Butterfly Habitat Summary 

1999

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This is our second summary and the 6th year for our urban butterfly garden.  The season started out with a bang!!  We experienced a seasonable & pleasant Spring.  Butterflies seemed to be abundant.  I noticed 20 large butterflies as I drove my car from Pottstown to Birdsboro on Route 724.  I thought to myself:  Could this be it?  Could this be the biggest butterfly season ever?  Do I now have to watch that I don't run over butterflies with my car?  Little did I know what this butterfly season had in store!

Yes, it turned out that there were Swallowtails everywhere, and I did run over quite a few.  We had record sightings in our garden seeing as many as 15 to 20 Tiger Swallowtails at one time in our 50 foot by 50 foot backyard.   Half of the backyard was planted with nectar flowers and host plants.  And then the drought came.  I didn't realize how lucky I was to be a butterfly gardener.  The plants I grow do not require a lot of water.  Many folks lost their flower & vegetable gardens.  Our open house was scheduled for August 7th.  I watered every day for weeks (I try not to water at all).   My plants' blooms were frozen in time.  No new blooms!

We held our 4th Annual Butterfly Garden Open House, which was attended by 85 guests from around the Tri-County area.  The garden looked quite good, even though our grass was white.  Our sightings included 8 Tiger Swallowtails, 2 Spicebush Swallowtails, 6 Cabbage, 2 Silver Spotted Skippers, 1 Eastern Black Swallowtail, 1 Dark Tiger Swallowtail, &  1 Monarch.  Other sightings included a Meadow Fritillary, Great Spangled Fritillary, Gray Hairstreak, Eastern Tailed Blue, Zabulon Skipper,  Comma,  Sachem Skipper, and an Indigo Duskywing.  We saw 14 species total; 33 butterflies total.  Missing was the Red Spotted Purple, and the Question Mark butterfly.  For those of you who wanted to know, my mother, Anna Mae Richael, passed away with cancer on August 26th, 1999. 

1999 was a difficult, and challenging year.  I would not want to go through another drought like this one.  We saw more butterflies this year than in past seasons, although we saw very few fruit eaters.  Our watermelon was empty most of the time.  We are used to seeing Commas, Question Marks,  Tawny Emperors, Hackberrys,  and Red Spotted Purples frequently, if not daily.  The severe drought must have caused this.  I did see a hummingbird drinking water melon as well as an Eastern Tailed Blue butterfly.  What next?

The best attractors were zinnia, verbena bonariensis ( our most reliable attractor ), and purple coneflower.  Coneflower had its best attracting year, while butterfly bush was not a factor till the rain finally came.  My tithonia did not do well, and my field thistles did not mature.   Zinnia was the best attractor at our open house.

Highlights of the 1999 season included two butterfly excursions with Karl Gardner, lepidopterist, from Berks County.  Because of Karl, I am going to start using a butterfly net more, and my camera less.  Karl taught me how to find Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars, and I was able to raise one at home to maturity.  My wife, Carol, and I saw several Zebra Swallowtails along the Susquehanna River near Maytown, PA.   I was able to get one good photograph, and also captured a Zebra Swallowtail.  Barbara Dunn, field editor for Birds & Blooms, visited our garden in August.  Stay tuned!  We also appreciated Ken Lebo's visit to our garden.  Congratulations to Tom Collins for his wonderful Butterfly Garden in Pottstown!

Rare Sightings in our garden included the Varigated Fritillary, Banded Purple, Sachem Skipper, and the Cloudless Sulphur.  Monarchs were plentiful at the end of the season and seemed to have a good year overall, unlike 1998.  Experiments in our garden next year will include mass plantings of  butterfly weed, and swamp milkweed.  

See you in 2000.                             

Ron Richael

Ron's Butterfly Sightings Summary
2004 Butterfly Habitat Summary 2005 Butterfly Habitat Summary 2006 Butterfly Habitat Summary
2001 Butterfly Habitat Summary 2002 Butterfly Habitat Summary 2003 Butterfly Habitat Summary
1998 Butterfly Habitat Summary   2000 Butterfly Habitat Summary

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