Big Butterfly Year: Wenima Wildlife Area, Springerville, AZ

Visited Wenima Wildlife Area this morning, after a trip to Alpine to look at fire damage caused by the Wallow Fire. I'll talk about Alpine in a different post. Wenima is about 3 miles north of Springerville off Highway 191. An absolutely beautiful place with an incredible history. I have been going to Wenima since 2007 to tag monarch butterflies. Normally, monarchs have been at Wenima in fair numbers from late July to late September, although I think tagger and monarch enthusiast Gail Morris has seen monarchs there in late June or early July. Over the years, my impression is that peak time for monarchs at Wenima is the last two weeks of August and the first week of September. So, granted, I am a hair late, but not very late. To give you an example, on September 22 of 2007 my family and I tagged 12 monarchs in an afternoon.
I tell you all of this because today's monarch performance was rather disappointing. I saw fourteen monarchs and tagged four. About half of the monarchs I saw were relatively fresh and new looking, the other half were very ratty and tattered. With the exception of September 16, 2009, this was my least productive trip in terms of monarch tagging.
Not only monarchs, but it seemed butterflies in general were really down. Seems like the old Wenima would be good for at least 8-10 species a day. Today I observed five species actually within the valley, and a sixth up on top of the mesa. All but two of these species were represented by a single individual. Saw 18 Common Checkered Skippers, 14 Monarchs, and one each of Two-tailed Swallowtail, Arizona Sister, Orange Sulphur, and Western Branded Skipper. Sadly, the swallowtail and sister went whizzing past so fast I had no chance of getting photos. If I do not get photos elsewhere in AZ of them, I will not be able to count them, and the odds aren't good. Two-taileds are infrequent at BTA and Sisters are very rare at BTA, and that is where I will be spending a majority of my weekend. I may have a chance at the sister in southern AZ. Was going to swing by Carr Canyon near Sierra Vista and also Portal, but both of those areas had fires this summer, so the pickings may be slim. May change plans and try Patagonia, but it is farther out of the way.
Wenima just isn't the same, habitat wise. The primary nectar of choice in the past was Carduus, or Musk Thistle. Carduus is an invasive species, so most of it has been removed in the last couple years. Problem is, Russian Thistle has largely taken over the site (another invasive) as well as Viguiera, which is not invasive but of virtually no nectar value at all. There seems to be sunflowers in new areas, which the monarchs are using for nectar. But, in my opinion, it seems the Russian Thistle is choking out a lot of native plants, including the primary host plant in the area for monarchs, Asclepias subverticillata. When I visited this site in 2009, there was a large patch of subvert' in the south pasture of Wenima. I could not hardly find a single plant of that patch now.
I guess what really makes me sad, is that this is most likely the last time I will be visiting Wenima, barring a considerable change in our family income and/or a vast improvement of this habitat. I guess I had hoped that my last visit would go out with a bang!
But, I did potentially pick up two new species for the BBY, and did pick up a definitely new species for the BBY and a lifer for me, the Western Branded Skipper.