Annual Butterfly Count 2020

On Sunday morning, July 26th, the Frederick County Nature Council hosted the Annual Butterfly Count at Catoctin Creek Park.  Several dedicated folks braved the extreme heat to cover a total of fifteen zones throughout the park in search of these winged beauties.  The goal was to identify as many different species as we could find and tally the total number of butterflies we encountered.  Naturalists throughout the state have observed that butterfly numbers have decreased this season....this has been primarily attributed to the two late season frosts this spring....so we were very interested to compare our results to those of previous years.  While numbers were lower than previous years, everyone had a great time at the park.  See below for our 2020 results. Thank you to Kathy Barylski for her leadership on this event!

Brush-footed: 

Red Spotted Purple 2

Hackberry Emperor 1

Monarch 3

American Snout 1

Common Buckeye 1

Eastern Comma 1

Pearl Crescent 1

Silvery Checkerspot 25+

Cabbage White 35+

Clouded Sulphur 6

Orange Sulphur 16

Sleepy Orange 1

Gossamer-wing:

Eastern-Tailed Blue 25+

Red Banded HS 1

Swallowtails:

Black Swallowtail 2

Easten Tiger Swallowtail 8

Spicebush Swallowtail 5

Zebra Swallowtail 3

Skippers: 

Dun Skipper 1

Least Skipper 6

Peck's 6

Zabulon 3

Sachem 8

Hayhurst's Scallopwing 1

Silver-Spotted Skipper 12

We hope you will join us next year!