Day 333: The hot weather of the last few weeks brought out the Whites by the hundreds...not the usual Margined Whites (Pieris marginalis) or Pine Whites (Neophasia menapia) I'm used to seeing in my yard, but good old-fashioned Cabbage Whites (Pieris rapae). I don't recall having ever seen them here before, supported by the fact that I have no photos of them in my archives. With them came the Woodland Skippers, both strongly attracted to the few remaining lavender flowers in the garden. These two butterflies were common when I was young, and among the first I learned to identify with common names. While I am happy to have both in my yard, I would like to know what shifts in climate brought them here. And why such huge numbers of them in a location where I have never observed them previously? Certainly some precursor to this phenomenon evaded my notice in 2016; butterflies don't generate from thin air. There were far too many to have come from an isolated pair mating outside their normal range. Such is the nature of science: not to solve the mysteries of the world with one discovery, but to raise more questions with each new revelation.
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