Northern Pearly-eye Invasion

  While Eileen, my oldest, was registering for classes at Ohio University, I ditched the parent campus tour and resource fair (I graduated from OU with my masters, so whats the point?!) to go butterflying at The Ridges, which is on the otherside of the Hocking River from OU.  A very cloudy and overcast day, and butterfly activity was correspondingly poor.  In fact, for the first 45 minutes there, I saw more pets than butterflies (see sign below!).
  After two hours my butterfly total was roughly 20 and I must admit I was feeling quite disappointed.  Kept trying to remind myself of the old saying, "a bad day butterflying is better than a good day at work."  But then, with about a half hour left in my visit, things took a very dramatic turn for the better, initiated by the sighting of what had to be a freshly eclosed Red-banded Hairstreak.  Granted, I get excited about hairstreaks, but this guy was absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous.  Judge for yourself.
  Then about fifty yards past the hairstreak I encountered a Hackberry Emperor which was, quite possibly, the friendliest/most aggressive butterfly I have ever encountered.  He landed on every part of me imagineable.  Would bounce from my leg, to my shoulder, to my back, to my hand, to my head, back to my shoulder . . .  Well you get the idea.  Was hard to get his picture because he either a) wouldn't hold still or b) wanted to take the picture himself.  Finally got a good shot of him sitting on my hand.
  About another 50 yards down the trail I encountered a group of butterflies puddling.  Now, puddling butterflies is not that unusual, although I do not see that behavior as often in Ohio as I saw in Arizona.  But in this case, it was the species that was puddling.  Northern Pearly-eye!  I had never seen NPI's do that before.  I will put a picture below.  Try to guess how many NPI's in the image.  I will post a second image to the blog showing how many I see.

View of Ohio University from The Ridges

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Red-banded Hairstreak

Hackberry Emperor

How many Northern Pearly-eyes do you see?

  So, the first two hours of the day were among the most disappointing of the summer.  The last half hour was perhaps the most fun of the year.  Guess it says never give up!