- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Standing on her front porch last Wednesday morning, overlooking the Dutchman's pipevine that her mother Della planted in the 1920s, Louise Hallberg is a picture of enthusiasm, dedication and sincerity--or what her docents call her “indomitable spirit.”
Her butterfly sanctuary, a non-profit corporation since 1997, has drawn more than 30,000 visitors, including scores of wide-eyed children and their teachers and parents butterfly enthusiasts, gardeners, and nature lovers. “Over 1000 visitors came on our Open Gardens Day on June 28,” she says. Many visitors come from out of the county, the state, and the country, she said.
Her expression turns to concern. I"'m terribly concerned about the drought. We've very low on rainfall. It was 105 on Sunday. It's been so hot, so long.” She is deeply concerned about the decline of butterflies. “I've tracked the butterflies here since 1992,” she relates. “We're not getting the numbers we used to.”
Louise Hallberg, who will be 99 next January, was born on the family farm. Her grandparents, John and Louise Neta Pearson, initially purchased 40 acres and expanded it to 130 acres, growing hops, berries, cherries, prunes, pears and apples. The oldest of their three children, Alfred, later took over the farm, and he and Della--the one who planted that Dutchman's pipe---raised two daughters, Louise and Esther.
“I remember when my mother found the Dutchman's pipevine growing along a country road and brought it here and planted it,” Louise recalls. “Look at it now."
Louise studied at Santa Rosa Junior College and UC Berkeley, majoring in political science. Then she worked 35 years as Santa Rosa Junior College registrar, retiring in 1975.
But it was the pipevine swallowtails that continued to spark her interest and what led to the formation of the butterfly sanctuary. She monitors the populations of many species of butterflies, keeping careful records. The numbers keep dwindling but not her passion.
On our visit, we enjoyed the ponds, the vivarium, the “secret garden,” butterfly creek, pipevine theater, the woodpecker granary, the meadow garden, and the weather station that her family has monitored and maintained for more than three decades. .We glimpsed the Gravenstein apple orchard and ladders leaning up against the trees, a scene from yesteryear that never changes.
"We add new plants (funded by donations) every year," Hallberg says. The Hallberg Butterfly Gardens, in western Sonoma County, are open by appointment for docent-guided tours from April 1 to Oct. 31. Appointments are offered Wednesday through Sunday, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. (Contact the tour and volunteer coordinator (707) 591-6967 or email her at leah@hallbergbutterflygardens.org to arrange a visit.) The non-profit corporation offers books, posters, t-shirts and other gifts. It annually hosts an Open Gardens Day in June that includes a plant sale. Louise Hallberg continues to publish her newsletter, aptly named "The Pipevine."
Meanwhile, during our visit, the red-spotted pipevine swallowtail caterpillars went about munching the leaves of the Dutchman's pipevine, while butterflies laid their eggs on their host plants: the monarchs on the milkweed and the anise swallowtails on fennel.
We thought back to the conversation on the front porch with this remarkable 98-year-old "Butterfly Lady of Sebastopol" and her love of the swallowtails, monarchs and dozens of other species of butterflies--and the worries she harbors, not for herself, but for the butterflies.
"It's been so hot, so long."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Beetles do it. Birds do it.
Bats do it.
Do what, you ask? They pollinate!
The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, will greet visitors on Saturday, March 14 at its open house, themed "Pollinator Nation."
To be held from 1 to 4 p.m. in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, it promises to be both fun and educational.
“It will be about bees, bees, bees!” said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis. "Also, we are borrowing specimens of pollinating birds, bats and lemurs from the UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology to cover non-insect pollinators, which should be fun."
Lots of animals are pollinators. It's not just bees, bats, butterflies. bats and birds. Pollinators can be ants, flies, moths, wasps and the like.
You'll see many of them at the open house. Staff research associate Billy Synk of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, will provide a bee observation hive. That's a glassed-in hive filled with a bee colony. You'll be able to see the queen bee, worker bees and drones.
The event is free and open to the public. Family activities are also planned.
Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas
The Bohart Museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum.
The museum is open to the public four days a week, Monday through Thursday, but special weekend open houses are held throughout the academic year
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The insect museum is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information is available by accessing the website at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/; telephoning (530) 752-9493; or emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Butterflies draw smiles instead of scowls, pleasure instead of pain, glee instead of grief.
So, here's Part 1 of the good news. You still have a chance to win the Beer-for-a-Butterfly contest. No one has come forth in the three-county area of Sacramento, Yolo and Solano to deliver the first cabbage white butterfly of the new year to Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis. If you collect the first one of 2015 and you're the verified winner, you'll receive a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.
Shapiro, who usually wins his own Beer-for-a-Butterfly contest, hasn't found one either. Every day has amounted to a "No Fly Day" and a "No Beer Day."
Reports are surfacing that the cabbage whites (Pieris rapae) are flying in Santa Rosa, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), Santa Rosa is in Sonoma County, not in Sacramento, Yolo or Solano counties.
Shapiro has sponsored the annual contest since 1972. It's all part of his four-decade study of climate and butterfly seasonality. “It is typically one of the first butterflies to emerge in late winter. Since 1972, the first flight has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20." Shapiro says his long-term studies of butterfly life cycles and climate "are especially important to help us understand biological responses to climate change. The cabbage white is now emerging a week or so earlier on average than it did 30 years ago here."
Shapiro, who is in the field more than 200 days a year, knows where and when to look. In fact, he's been defeated only three times since 1972, and all by his graduate students. Adam Porter defeated him in 1983; and Sherri Graves and Rick VanBuskirk each won in the late 1990s.
In 2014, Shapiro netted the winning butterfly at 12:20 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 14 in West Sacramento, Yolo County. It ranked as "the fifth or sixth earliest since 1972.
The contest rules include:
- It must be an adult (no caterpillars or pupae) and be captured outdoors.
- It must be brought in alive to the department office, 2320 Storer Hall, UC Davis, during work hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with the full data (exact time, date and location of the capture) and your name, address, phone number and/or e-mail. The receptionist will certify that it is alive and refrigerate it. (If you collect it on a weekend or holiday, keep it in a refrigerator; do not freeze. A few days in the fridge will not harm it.)
- Shapiro is the sole judge.
Part 2 of the good news about butterflies: a mid-winter gathering of Northern California Lepidopterists and the Bohart Museum of Entomology will take place at an open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 31 in the Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. Hosts are Bohart senior museum scientist-entomologist Steve Heydon and entomologists John De Benedictis and Jeff Smith.
Lepidopterists are researchers or hobbyists who specialize in the study of butterflies and moths in the order Lepitopdera.
All interested persons are encouraged to bring specimens, photos, PowerPoint presentations or slides from collecting trips and tales of collecting triumphs to share with others. Butterfly t-shirts and other entomological merchandise are available from the gift shop.
The museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens, and is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. It was founded by noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007).
For more information on the mid-winter gathering of lepitopterists, contact Steve Heydon at (530) 752-0493 or slheydon@ucdavis.edu.
Meanwhile, The Great White Cabbage Butterfly Hunt is still underway. Can you find one before Art Shapiro does?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
He recorded 12 species of butterflies in the dry vegetation. (He's been monitoring the butterfly population in Central California for some four decades and he shares the information on his website.)
Frankly, we're surprised he went monitoring at all, especially after he emailed friends and colleagues about the bad news. Subject line: "Breaking Bad."
"At 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept.11, my world turned upside-down. So did I.
"I was just into the crosswalk from the NW corner of Oak and Russell in Davis, heading south toward my lab, when I was struck from behind with great force by a bicyclist. I flew through the air and landed on the pavement head-first, with the right side of my face bearing the worst of the impact. The wife of a departmental colleague arrived on the scene a moment later; I believe she called 911. I was never unconscious, which is strange. My neck could easily have been broken, resulting in either death or paralysis, but it wasn't (the EMTs had assumed it was!). I was rushed to Sutter Davis Hospital and thence transferred to the UC Davis hospital trauma unit in Sacramento....Every bone on the right side of my face was pulverized. I had no more eye socket (orbit) and no more right cheekbone."
It was not a hit-and-run, as some folks speculated. The bicyclist stayed for the police report.
Through it all, Shapiro retained his sense of humor and is now back at work in his Storer Hall office after surgery on Sept. 12 and a repeat visit to the UC Davis Medical Center today. And he can see again.
"...my right eye is swollen shut, I am all black and blue and look like I've been in the ring with Mike Tyson. I look like a ghoul in a zombie-apocalypse movie, with caked blood, blah blah. I'm not sure I've ever felt worse, though, oddly, there hasn't been all that much pain."
So, immediately after the Medical Center appointment, he trekked over to his North Sacramento study site. His appearance did not go unnoticed. "Looking like I do is an invitation for street people, homeless, and down-and-outers to talk to you, as I learned today. There were only two campers at North Sac, but I had a dozen such conversations...most of them assumed I had been in a fight." One guy said said 'I hope you gave the other guy as bad as you got!'
True to form, Shapiro appeared to be most interested in monitoring butterflies than monitoring his physical condition.
"North Sac: 88F, clear, very light S wind. No new fires. Veg very dry, less of everything in bloom except Euthamia (goldentops) Hemizonia (tarweeds), and Epilobium (willowherbs/fireweeds) all peaking. No coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis) yet. With all the Euthamia I expected (Atlides) halesus (Great purple streak), but didn't see it; with all the Epilobium expected (Ochlodes) sylvanoides (Woodland skipper), but didn't see it, either; and there were no Poanes melane (umber skipper)."
The species he recorded:
- Junonia coenia, 11, Buckeye
- Pyrgus communis, 18, Common Checkered Skipper
- Plebejus acmon, 5, Acmon Blue
- Pieris rapae, 19, Cabbage White
- Strymon melinus, 4, Gray Hairstr.eak
- Brephidium exile, 1. Western Pygmy Blue
- Atalopedes campestris, 4, Field Skipper
- Phyciodes mylitta, 10, Mylitta Crescent
- Everes comyntas, 1, Eastern Tailed Blue
- Hylephila phyleus, 7, Fiery Skipper
- Limenitis lorquini, 3, Lorquin's Admiral
- Agraulis vanillae, 1, Gulf Fritillary
Twelve different species. Eighty-bugs.
And what did Shapiro have to say about his field trip? "Me and AH-nold: we're b-a-a-a-a-a-c-k."
"It feels good," he added.
And we're all feeling good--whew!--that he's feeling good.
That was a close one.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Butterflies flutter.
Bees don't.
Indeed, some bees seem to possess Superman's extraordinary power of "faster than a speeding bullet." They're just lacking a blue costume, a red cape and an "S" on their thorax.
The butterfly doing the fluttering in our garden is the Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae, a showy reddish-orange Lepitopderan that lays its eggs on our passionflower vine (Passiflora).
The bee doing the speeding-bullet routine is the male longhorned digger bee, Melissodes agilis. They are so territorial that they claim ALL members of the sunflower family in our garden: the blanket flowers (Gallardia), the Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia) and the purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea).
They relentlessly patrol the garden and dive-bomb assorted bumble bees, carpenter bees, honey bees, sweat bees, wasps, syrphid flies, butterflies and even stray leaves that land on "their" flowers. (Their eyesight is not as good as Superman's.)
Why? They're trying to save the pollen and nectar resources for the Melissodes agilis females. And trying to entice and engage the girls.
Last Sunday we watched a Gulf Frit touch down on the Tithonia. Just as it was gathering some nectar, a speeding bullet approached.
How fast?
If it were a horse, it would have been Secretariat.
If it were a track star, it would have been "Lightning Bolt" Usian St. Leo Bolt.
If it were a car, it would have been a Hennessey Venom GT.
If it were a plane, it would have been a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.
Swoosh! As the longhorned digger bee rifled by, the startled Gulf Frit shot straight up. Straight up.
Frankly, the Gulf Frit could have "leaped a tall building in a single bound."