Collecting at Albany Hill 4/10/17

Collecting at Albany Hill (Albany, California) 4/10/17.

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After our trip to Canyon trail Park, we decided to take a visit to Albany Hill to see if we could have some luck with the western tiger swallowtails (Papilio rutulus) there. Albany Hill is hands down the best rutulus habitat we seen around here - there is a nice long creek at the bottom of the hill (Cerrito Creek), surrounded with lush green willow trees, a popular host plant. When you get on the hill itself, there is a trail along the creek that is in full sunshine, and it is here that the rutulus love to fly. Last summer we caught several as they flew up and down the path and in the tree tops. 

​Below are pictures of the rutulus habitat (Albany Hill).

To make things better, it turned out this habitat isn't just great for one swallowtail, but two - we discovered a huge, vigorous patch of passion vines growing along the creek great for attracting Battus philenor hirsuta. Unfortunately, we didn't see any pipevine swallowtails flying around nor were there any eggs or caterpillars.

Anyway, as we hiked up the trail, we immediately saw yellow figures soaring through the air - the rutulus were already up and about during this time of year as we suspected. We went ahead and began chasing after them for the next hour or two and we managed to get two very fresh looking males. One was larger but paler in color (the individual in the top row of photos below), and the other was smaller but darker (the individual in the left and middle photos on the bottom row). There were definitely a few more that we weren't able to catch, such as the individual in the bottom right photo below. 

When we were close to heading home, we spotted another rutulus up in the tree tops and we went to get a closer look. It turned out it was nectaring on flowers of the tree, which we believe was locust (Robinia sp). It never came down for us to have a chance at catching it, but we managed to get some pretty good shots, though none very close up. 

While hunting the rutulus, we came across a few other butterflies as well, such as this mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa). It was a male and pretty bad in shape - the wings were all torn up on the edges and it had a lot of scratches. We caught one of these last summer as well the same day we caught three rutulus, so it looks like rutulus and antiopa are a typical catches at Albany Hill. 

We also saw this monarch flying around the entrance of the path but we couldn't catch it. They are a pretty common sight at Albany Hill as well. 

Like Canyon Trail Park, of the other insects that were at at Albany Hill, damselflies and dragonflies were the most abundant by far. They were everywhere you looked - on the ground, in the sky, and in the grass. Just a careless sweep of the net in a random direction and there would be a few in there. some other insects we saw were these two mating flies perched on a grass blade that we saw right as we were heading back.

Since we couldn't really get any good open-winged dorsal shots of the rutulus on the actual trip, we posed one at home just so you can see all the nice patterns. 

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​Authors
Alan Liang

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