Big Butterfly Year: Southern Ohio

Went in search of Golden Banded-Skipper on Monday to southern Ohio between Portsmouth and West Union. And for the first time this year, I actually found what I went in search of! Go figure.
First stop was along Bridle Trail #5 at Shawnee State Forest. Strapped a saddle onto the bike and tore down the trail. Just kidding! Parked at the roadblock in front of the No Parking sign and walked down the trail. The trip up the trail was pretty slow, from a butterfly perspective. It was a little chilly and overcast. Turned around at the top of the ridge (about 3/4 mile later) and the trip down was much better with the sun shinging brightly. Picked up two species new to the BBY: Golden Banded-Skipper and Red-banded Hairstreak. Picked up a couple handfuls of black raspberries also. Yum! A total of 16 species and 118 individuals, almost half of the individuals being Silver-spotted Skippers.
About 20 miles down the road is Lynx Prairie, a nature conservancy site. A little tricky to find as the entrance is located in the back of a cemetary. This site has a series of woodland openings that have converted back to prairie. You enter one of these prairie openings shortly after getting onto the trail. The other openings are sort of tucked in the back and not readily visible. Take the green trail and you will go through a couple more openings. These far back openings had much better nectar supplies, and therefore better bugs. Once again, butterfly wise, things started slow, but picked up after awhile, once I got to the back section. Here I picked up four new species to the BBY: Southern Cloudywing, Edward's Hairstreak, Dun Skipper, and Delaware Skipper. These first two were also life butterflies for me. Total of 18 species and 69 individuals here. For the day, 26 species, my best one-day total so far, although Trimble still has the record for most species at a single site with 25.