Yet more flooding

 One of my major volunteering efforts is mapping storm tides as part of Wetlands Watch and their Catch the King. I've written about this a few times in the past including back in 2017 when we set a world record for the most contributions to an environmental survey.

  This year, the astronomical high tide for September and October are pretty close so we did a "Wet Run" for the September tide and the full Catch the King event in October. Early in the week during September we had a steady northeast wind that piles up water down here in the Southwest Chesapeake Bay so the tide even higher than the astronomical predictions. I was able to get out multiple days to do some mapping around my area. 

At one of our local boat launches, the parking lot was cut off by the flooding. Water crossed the road approaching the parking lot and the ramp area itself was flooding to mid-calf level. 

Flooded parking lot. There is two set of boat-trailer parking
rows underwater between here and the river

Close up of the kayak launch that usually goes down to the water

There is a boat ramp somewhere under that water. Again the floating
dock is above ground level

Luckily, this stayed in the nuisance / minor level so it mainly flooded open areas and yards and didn't do much damage to property. At the first place above, they did fail to secure the trash bins fisherman use. That unfortunately dumped a lot of waste and debris back into the bay. Events like this can really impact local water quality negatively.

Finally, I set up my camera to record the flooding in the marsh behind our house. Notice the animals making use of the recently flooded areas. This is a phenomena that we often see with herons and other animals feeding high up in the marsh during and after high tides. 

It is a week later as I write this and yet another storm is passing by and bringing more water. I'm about to head out for some more mapping.

Butterflies galore

Dunn skipper seen on butterfly count

On Aug 9, my wife and I joined three other Virginia Master Naturalists for the Northwest sector in the Williamsburg annual butterfly count. The count is in support of North American Butterfly Association (NABA) and locally sponsored by the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory (CVWO). We have done several other counts in the region the last several years but this is our first time on the Williamsburg count. Usually in early August we can expect very hot and humid to very hot and very humid weather. This year we got lucky with the temperature and humidity at quite comfortable levels. 

Most of our stops were manicured gardens instead of the wild areas that we have been in for other counts. This included a plant nursery, a community garden, or allotments, the Williamsburg Botanical Gardens, and a couple of private gardens. With all of the blooming garden plants, there were a lot of eastern tiger swallowtails, monarchs, and sachems (a skipper) throughout the day.

Eastern swallowtail

Common buckeye

We started at the plant nursery with permission to be there before they opened for sales. The agastache (Anise hyssop) was covered with tiger swallowtails. We counted at least 8 moving between the blooms and at times, it seemed like a lot more with many in the air at a time. There were also high numbers of three different skipper species. 

A quick stop at the James City County library where there is a small storm water pond netted us several pearl crescents and common buckeyes. Both high counts for the day.

Sachem on a zinnia

Red-spotted purple seen
in the woods

The allotment gardens were a busy place; both people and butterflies. Probably half the gardens had people tending them on the Saturday morning. And with the blooming vegetable plants and a lot of zinnias, the butterflies were busy as well. We had sixty individual butterflies from 17 species; most at the allotments. This included 13 monarchs, another 8 tiger swallowtails, 8 variegated fritilaries, and 11 sachems. We also walked around some of the wooded edges and sports fields. A soccer field hosted 45 killdeer which would have been a great count if we were counting birds instead of butterflies. But it was still an impressive sight.

Our last major stop was at the Williamsburg Botanical Gardens. This was again full of tiger swallowtails along with a handful of sleepy oranges and a scattering of other species. We also had a very accommodating ruby-throated hummingbird.

Rudy-throated hummingbird (a bird, not a butterfly😁 )

All told, after 6 and a half hours looking for butterflies, we had seen 137 individuals from 20 species, including this male and female pair of zabulon skippers.

Male and female zabulon skippers