Life List

If you're a birder or a butterflyer or any kind of nature enthusiast, you might have heard of the term "life list." You might even have one yourself. For those who keep a list of all the species you have seen, you know the thrill that comes from adding something new to your record sheet, whether it's in a notebook, an Excel spreadsheet, in the back of a guidebook, or in your head.

My life list started innocently enough after a trip to a butterfly house in the Poconos a couple years ago. After discovering that there were native butterflies named after punctuation (i.e., commas and question marks), this grammar nerd was now hooked on lepidoptera. So I picked up a small Petersen's guide with illustrations of common North American butterflies and started checking off the ones I had seen, or thought I had seen. My identification skills have improved greatly since then, and while I now check off butterflies in an Ohio-specific guidebook, I really do keep the list in my head for the most part.

Look closely, and you'll see the eyes peeking over the leaf
during this intimate moment.

This weekend, I had been thinking about my late friend Cheryl, my butterfly mentor and friend. She always talked about going with her pal to a certain park to look for West Virginia Whites in April. They have a very short flight season and are restricted to certain locales. I was not at that particular park this weekend, but I wondered if maybe I would find one where I was. I knew there had been nearby records at a state nature preserve a few miles away. The sun was shining and although it was not yet sixty degrees, the sun was warm on my back—and I had to believe warm enough to wake the flutterbys.

I had been on a few different trails through the muddy wetlands and the deciduous forest when I came upon what I thought were two Cabbage White butterflies chasing each other. These looked smaller, though, and when they landed in a copulating position, I realized they were lacking the notable black dots that cabbages have on their wings. My camera battery was about to die, but before it did, I managed to get a couple photos of the action. They fluttered away. I watched them fly separately and then find each other once again. I took a few more pictures and uploaded them to iNaturalist, a citizen science portal that helps with identifications. Even before the good folks at iNaturalist confirmed my identification, I knew what I had seen. Jubilation! Thank you, Cheryl!

Adding to one's life list could be likened to checking things off a bucket list, I suppose. But for me, there's something special about adding to a list rather than subtracting from it. In Ohio, it is estimated that we have about 125 species of butterflies. Some of these are quite common across most of the state, like the Monarch or the Cabbage White whereas others are more localized either because of their location or their limited flight time, such as the Falcate Orangetip (not on my list) or the West Virginia White. Some butterflies remain on state lists but have been extirpated, or are no longer present in the state, like the Regal Frittilary. And some are being reintroduced and monitored very carefully, like the Karner Blue in northwest Ohio.

I had to include the Eastern Comma. I'm sure I'll write
another blog about this favorite butterfly of mine.

I am on a quiet quest to see as many butterflies as possible, not because I'm like that guy in the movie The Big Year, who is trying to break a record for seeing the most birds in one year, but because adding to my life list adds to the richness of my life. It is not competition but communion.