Pickaway County, Ohio

Visited a couple of the limited number of natural areas in Pickaway County.  Took the truck as small but intense thunderstorms were popping all around.  Fortunately weather cleared late morning, and I only got sprinkled on briefly.  I had three sites I wanted to visit, but was not able to make it to Marion State Park.  Ran out of time.
  First stop was at Calamus Swamp southwest of Circleville.  Calamus is owned and maintained by Columbus Audubon.  All of our spring rains showed as the lake level was way up.  Most of the trail around the lake was underwater, as was sections of the boardwalk across the lake.  Had to find my way across ten feet of ankle deep water to even get to the boardwalk.  Was rather disappointed with the few number of butterflies and with the general maintenance level of the site.  Small trees down on the boardwalk along with a dead raccoon on the boardwalk.  The raccoon was pretty flat so he'd been there for awhile.  Only saw six species of butterflies and seven total butterflies.  Was able to get good pics of Common Buckeye which I did need.  For what the site lacked in butterflies it certainly made up for with dragonflies, including the spreadwing pictured below that I am having some ID problems with.
  Next, and last stop, was Stage's Pond, an ODNR site northeast of Circleville.  A wide variety of habitats including old woods, young woods, old field, lake, and butterfly gardens.  Considering the great habitat, only picked up 15 species, but two were new to the BBY: Hackberry Emperor and Crossline Skipper.  Total of 36 butterflies.  Once again, lots of great dragonflies though.  When I do my big dragonfly year in the future, I will definitely make several trips here.  Flies were awful though.  I had humored my wife and used Skin-So-Soft before I left which offered some bug protection, but flies buzzing my head were driving me nuts.  I pulled out and made a generous application of DEET, and no more flies.
  The butterfly gardens were in front of a building at the end of a blocked drive.  I assume it is a maintenance building of some sort.  Two species of native milkweeds were planted (Butterfly Weed and COmmon Milkweed) along with some native sunflowers.  The milkweeds were in full bloom, probably two weeks ahead of their wild growing relatives.  I assume heat off the building and the south exposure had something to do with that.

A very swampy Calamus Swamp

mystery Spreadwing

Hackberry Emperor

Stage's Pond, literally

Crossline Skipper on Common Milkweed

  Species list for the day: Cabbage White, Summer Azure, Eastern-tailed Blue, Silver-spotted Skipper, Common Buckeye, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Hackberry Emperor, Northern Pearly-eye, Zabulon Skipper, Pearl Crescent, Orange Sulphur, Clouded Sulphur, Peck's SKipper, Eastern Comma, Crossline Skipper, Silvery Checkerspot.