Our Environment: “Red Spotted Delight” by Scott Turner

Our Environment: “Red Spotted Delight” by Scott Turner

The kind folks at the Massachusetts Butterfly Club identified the tattered remains of the butterfly as a Red-Spotted Purple.

Last week, Karen and I found the insect’s flattened carcass on a dirt road that runs through the Nipmuck State Forest Mountain Laurel Sanctuary in Union, CT.  

That the corpse was on the lane suggested that the butterfly was not only flattened by a vehicle, but that it was killed either sipping from something like mud or excrement on the road surface or darting across the open space.

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Still, the iridescent blue-green on the butterfly’s hindwing, orange underwing spots, and overall shape suggested that the insect was a Pipevine Swallowtail, which is more of an open-area nectar sucker versus the woodland-trail-preferring, feces-feasting Red-Spotted Purple.

But in reading up about the Red-Spotted Purple, we learned that it mimicked the shape and (to us novice butterfly sleuths) some of the underwing color of the Pipevine Swallowtail. Plus, the Red-Spotted Purple was a species that preferred slurping ground items versus drinking nectar. Indeed, it favored sap flows, rotting fruit, mud, dung and carrion, soaking up salts, minerals and organic compounds in the process.

We also learned that male butterflies were more likely than females to sip such stuff. During reproduction, males passed along the absorbed nutrients to females, which transferred them into the eggs. In addition, males used the compounds to produce female-attracting chemicals, called pheromones.

We’d driven the 80 minutes to the sanctuary to stroll and catch-up with old friends, David and Leora, who came over from West Hartford, CT.

Mountain laurel is a shrub that reaches 20 feet in height. It is also the Connecticut state flower. We found the blossoms peaking in heavy clusters of white or pink flowers. These often served as the foreground for a diverse forest of trees and ferns.

Each showy cluster of blooms contained dozens of individual, saucer-shaped flowers. Some were still emerging from ribbed, star-shaped buds. In the sunlight, certain bunches of white flowers were so bright that they produced glare.

The rich forest featured impressively tall trees. Of note, we found uncommonly large specimens of chinkapin oak, yellow birch, shagbark hickory and tuliptree.

At one point, we noticed a patch of ferns that featured at least five distinct types. Interspersed among them were the beautiful wildflower, red trillium. Per the U.S. Forest Service, “Red trillium tends to occur in drier habitats and is typically found on acid soils, in open dry or rich mesic woods, within laurel and rhododendron thickets.”

We also heard several species of birds associated with extensive and luxuriant surroundings. These included Veery, Scarlet Tanager, Blue-headed Vireo, Black-and-White Warbler and Chestnut-sided Warbler.

Yet, that thrashed Red-Spotted Purple butterfly stuck with us. What a stunning-looking creature. You could still see some of the iridescence visible on the remains of its wings.

The butterfly was just a few feet from the crushed cadavers of a garter snake and a dragonfly. Roads that cut through natural areas are notorious for producing roadkill. Research suggests that billions of butterflies alone perish in collisions with vehicles each year in North America.

I own a 1951 hardcover of A Field Guide to the Butterflies of North America. In to I placed what was left of the Red-Spotted Purple. Bits of several other car-crushed butterflies live on in those pages. The book is not only a helpful guide but a shrine to some of the most beautiful creatures that cross our paths each summer.

Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.