Higher Elevation Butterflies
Back to the Colonel Devin Trail in Payson, Arizona yesterday with hopes the Butterfly Weed was finally in bloom. (It was late to bloom this year so we found very little on the last trip up). This time, we saw plenty and were rewarded with Western Tiger Swallowtails and Northwestern Fitillaries nectaring on it. My favorite photos from the hike are below.
Western Tiger Swallowtail on Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Northwestern Fritillary
Southern Dogface
Pleasing Fungus Beetle (Gibbifer californicus)
Golden Banded Skipper
Western Tiger Swallowtail on Arizona Thistle
Dainty Sulphur (TINY)
Marine Blue
Mylitta Crescent
Unidentified
Northwestern Fritillary on New Mexico Raspberry
Duskywing (unidentified) laying eggs on Oak Sapling. Do you see one on the upper right? There is another one at the tip of her abdomen.
Long Jawed Orb Weaver with web just above the creek
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Butterfly envy again! But isn’t it blazingly hot there right now to be out and about during the day? Or is it that much cooler at higher elevation? I love the name of that beetle and amazing your capture of the butterfly laying eggs!
Thanks for your comment, Mandy! Yes…the heat has arrived and yes elevation makes a huge difference in temperature! For instance…I live 1500 feet higher than Phoenix which drops our temperature 7+degrees. That doesn’t sound like a lot but people here are very used to the heat and are happy when the temp stays around 100 and it rarely gets over 105 at my house. Even when our temps do climb higher, the mornings are still cool enough to work in my garden until about 10am. After that, you just don’t go out (our equivalent to snow days 🙂
The area these butterflies were photographed was in the Pine forests of Payson which is 20 degrees cooler. Payson is just an hour and a half away, by the way. Drive another hour and the elevation can climb to 8000 feet which drops the temps from 30 to 50 degrees depending on where you go. Many who can afford it have second homes in these areas. Very convenient as it is so close to home. We prefer to move around so we have an Airstream which we pull to various campgrounds for a couple of weeks in each of the hot months.
Wildflower season at higher elevations is from mid July thru September so we always head north during the summer. All in all, 4 months of heat is a tradeoff I can live with in exchange for having such diversity of climates, terrains and eco systems so close to home. It’s an amazing place to live!
I didn’t get an email notification of your reply but I’m sure I pressed the button. Never mind.
I think I could live there in the way you describe, going higher to escape the heat. And of course when you have air conditioning inside it makes it that much easier. It’s when us Europeans have sudden heatwaves and our houses heat up tremendously that it is so hard to handle. If you can’t sleep at night then you feel so much worse during the day.
Thankfully that is rare here in Brittany but we did have a heatwave summer in 2003 all over France (and other parts of Europe), when unfortunately many elderly people died. I was living near Geneva at the time and whilst we didn’t quite hit 100F, it was close and just went on for the best part of 3 months, with only a few cool spells. With the ‘wrong’ kind of plants for that kind of heat and not much rain, it was hard keeping my garden alive and I had to put the sprinkler on every evening. We felt like our summer was wasted being stuck indoors behind closed shutters all day. And the house was so HOT! It was horrible!
You do of course have those fantastic winters too with not many cold spells, so I can understand the lure….. 🙂 I would certainly rather live where you do than live somewhere with snow for 5 months of the year!