Cabbage White sitting on Oxalis

Umber Skipper by TW Davies, Cal Academy of Sciences

It’s nice to have positive things to say about Nature in the City (which we’ve disagreed with, more than once), and this is really a win. Despite some pretty cold foggy weather, their June 7th Butterfly Count got 34 participants and spotted 24 species of butterfly – a record.

Anise Swallowtail, Twin Peaks

The most common species remains the Cabbage White, which accounted for over 40% of the butterflies counted. Next was the Umber Skipper, a tiny butterfly barely larger than your finger tip. Third was the spectacular Anise Swallowtail. The top ten species accounted for over 85% of the butterflies counted. Of course, this is just one year’s result, and may have been biased by weather, visibility, and observer accuracy. Still, we think they did a pretty awesome job. Congratulations.

For anyone interested in more detail, here’s a graph of the results. A total of 775 butterflies were counted, of which 29 were not specifically identified. (Click on the graph and click again for a larger version.) The data are available on Nature-in-the-City’s website.

2010 Butterfly Count Results