Hardest to net ?

[gaspipe]

On the topic of netting stuff ( not over bait) what do you veterans think are the most difficult NA species to net ? My white whale to date has been the clouded sulphur ; in the last 3 years I’ve only managed 4 !

[nomihoudai]

Papilio glaucus at the wrong time of the day/year. I hate it when they don't come down to the ground.

I got a few Anaea andria using a net. You can sneak up on them. That didn't compare to Charaxes jasius in Europe when you only have a net.

[evra]

Any Megathymus for butterflies, and any dayflying Hemileuca or Calosaturnia for moths.

[jtaylor]

Hands down Anaea andria for me are the hardest to net. I've missed way more than I've netted.

[jhyatt]

Well, Anaea andria is baitable, so you don't have to net them...
I usually can find P. glaucus on or near the ground; for me the tough one was P. appachiensis. I got to Spruce Knob, WVA, once when they were
plentiful, but were all nectaring on the flowers of blooming hawthorn trees. Not for nothing is "thorn" in the name of that tree! You could see
the bugs sitting there feeding, but the flowers were all in places where swinging a net was impossible without snagging it on a long thorn, and out came
the butterfly. Very frustrating! Took me forever to get a modest series.

Also, once on Stock Island in the FL Keys, Chlorostrymon maesites was flying and landing in tall treetops, far beyond any net at hand. They looked like
little bees way up there. I spend all day getting a pair, but it was worth it!

Cheers,
jh

[leptraps]

I am absolutely positive that John Hyatt will agree with me 100%. Chlorostrymon maesites. In 1972(??) we journeyed to the Florida Keys to collect Lepidoptera. We visited the Old Botanical Garden on Stock Island, the last Key before Key West.
To truly appreciate the list of Hairstreaks we collected from the tops of tree with extension net 30 to 40 feet in length. You had to be there.

There was a strip joint with young ladies and a total lack of clothing.

What a collecting trip. John Hyatt, your turn to speak up. Who stepped on the dead Porpoises?

[777]

The species I struggle to find the most is the common mestra. I've only seen one three years ago.

[billgarthe]

Speaking of only netting, I have six real tough ones. I realize some are best caught w bait, but the question was for the netting of.

Butterflies........
Junonia evarete nigrosuffusa,........fast, lands on ground and is very weary
Eunica tatila,.......lands on 1-2” wide tree trunks which is hard to sneak up on and one has to double net from front and behind trunk
Phoebis philea,....fast and flies high only occasionally landing on flowers
Hypaurotis crysalus,......flies fast and high able to be brought down only with a purple flag
Marpesia petreus.........in any good condition prior to or after netting.

Moths.......
tapping for Catocala atocala........hard to sneak up to and is fast and weary/tough to follow if disturbed.

[58chevy]

Anaea andria, Alypia octomaculata, Eurytides marcellus, Phoebis sennae

[trehopr1]

I feel that "generally speaking" amongst butterflies most Nymphalidae
as a family are the most difficult to "net". Without the use of baits
(whichever one you may use); they nearly always are the most wary of
butterflies.

In my personal experiences with the net I have found Eurytides marcellus,
Phoebis philea and Phoebis sennae all to be of unusual difficulty in securing
a capture.

Heck, I have even had some tough times attempting to net Question marks, Comma's,
and Red-spotted Purples specifically. And they have a times "won" the battle and
lived to fly another day !

[leptraps]

Love my Bait Traps!!

[jhyatt]

Leroy's memory is basically correct - he was with the group on Stock Island when the Chlorostrymon maesites were flying only in
the treetops. Somewhere I have a 35mm slide of Dave Baggett or somebody with one of the immensely tall extension nets we had.

The dead porpoise episode was on the way back to TN from the Keys. Near Darien, GA we stopped to collect in a tidal marsh where the rare skippers
Problema bulenta and Euphyes dukesi were flying, along with a vast horde of Poanes viator. One had to wade to take specimens off the blooming pickerel weed, and
while totally focused on a distant skipper, I stepped smack dab in the middle of a rotted dead baby porpoise. Unbelievable stench! My boots were a discard, and
the jeans I had on came home with the end of the legs flapping outside the trunk of the car. Missed the skipper, too.

Another tough bug for me to net: Oeneis jutta. The one time I encountered them, they were landing only on small evergreen trunks, and the limb growth was so
thick that getting a net near them was impossible. Getting a little series took a huge amount of work.

Cheers,
jh

[jhyatt]

Bill Garth,

Apropos' to H. chrysalus: The one time I encountered them in numbers (it was outside the Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs,
they were landing and sitting as nice as you please on low foliage of Gambel's Oaks on a dry hillside - both males and females. Easy-peasy.
I guess almost nothing is hard to net at all places at all times!

That was about the ugliest place I've ever encountered a really beautiful and much sought-after butterfly. It was a hillside power line cut
next to a busy interstate, dry as could be. Looked like Afghanistan or some similar place!

jh

[58chevy]

777,

The "common mestra" is in fact very common in the southern part of TX (LRGV up to San Antonio, even Austin on occasion). They are slow, lazy fliers & easy to capture. The wings are very delicate, so you need to catch lots of them in order to get a few good specimens.

[gaspipe]

Jan 25, 2021 10:16:11 GMT -8 58chevy said:

Anaea andria, Alypia octomaculata, Eurytides marcellus, Phoebis sennae

Couldn’t agree with you more on E marcellus, not only fast , erratic and high flyers ya gotta worry about breaking those beautiful tails . My plan this year is too locate a bunch , obtain some good old horse manure and sit ; yeah I know that’s kind of cheating .

[mikeh]

Discussions like this are definitely very personal depending the places one visits and the desirability of thw quarry. Personally I feel like I have never had much trouble with Swallowtails or Phoebus sennae but a large part of this may just be me not remembering the misses as much as the successes in these instances. To me the worst ones are the ones that I was not able to identify before they got away or the probable lifers that I have only seen and missed the one time. A big part as well is observation and learning their habits and figuring out the best approach to making the catch.

Some comments on a few species that have been mentioned and some that have not which I have a bit of experience with.

H. crysalus has always seemed fairly easy to me and I have never really had much trouble finding it if I look in the right places, it also readily inhabits the suburbs if there is hostplant. I actually caught one the first time I ever went collecting with my homemade coat hanger and window screen net. I think the trick is to just find colonies in trees that are not too tall and then tapping the trees to encourage them to fly a short distance and re-perch for easy netting. Sometimes you can find Gambel's Oak that are a bit sappy and have large numbers flying about the same tree. The host trees tend to grow taller further south so collecting them in Arizona is much more challenging than collecting them in Utah or Colorado though.

Day-flying Hemileuca were always impossible for me to net as a teenager, I remember chasing after one for like half a mile once in a big meadow when I was about 16 and of course it was completely futile. The key to me seems to be recognizing common flyways on slopes where they are fairly common and just laying in wait until one flies close enough, in good places I still only end up netting about 3-4 per hour on average. First time I caught one was about 10 years after I started collecting but there was a population explosion near my house that year of eglanterina and I saw hundreds of individuals in places where I had never seen any before or since. I found a ravine with a narrow opening in the oak trees and individuals were flying through it about one a minute and I was able to pick up a nice series in just a few minutes.

Junonia evarete nigrosuffusa is very wary and a bit tricky to sneak up on but they are also very territorial so even if I miss I feel like they are likely to stick around the same area and if I am patient I can net them eventually.

Megathymus yuccae I have had decent success with, at least they are big so I can see them coming or landing and I have had decent sucess. Males also seem territorial and tend to stick to ravines in my experience so sometimes one can find a spot they seem to like and lay in wait for them to come and perch. Megathymus streckeri has seemed practically impossible but maybe I just need to find a better spot.

Hilltopping Hesperia has been my bane, too small too follow when they get spooked, I have to spot them as they land on rocks or when they are already perched and manage to sneak up on them. Often it seems they are relatively uncommon with only one or two individuals buzzing around below the summit. And of course they are too small and similar to other species to ID without them being in hand. Skippers in general seem to be quite challenging unless they are nectaring. Amblyscirtes and Atrytonopsis are two other difficult genera for me.

Oeneis has several species that are somewhat difficult to catch, O. jutta often hides on the bark of trees where it is difficult to spot and swing the net but occasionally can be found nectaring and exposed where it is easy to catch. This was actually the first Oeneis I found as a teenager a year or two after I started collecting since I unknowingly went backpacking in a valley that is well known for them and found several on flowers. The higher elevation Oeneis melissa, polyxenes and bore are also challenging due to the elevation and rockyness and for melissa the tendency to fly over cliffedges but really the hardest part is getting to good habitat and each can occasionally found commonly in places with more favorable ground cover. Oeneis alberta is extremely challenging as well in Colorado due to its scarcity, usually perching and not flying but always flying fast and far when spooked but seems much easier in Arizona.

Erebia magdalena is also very challenging to catch due to flying over scree but sometimes can be found nectaring in more grassy areas and easily netted. Oftentimes it just takes patience and picking a good spot to stand since they can't easily be chased.

Lycaena phlaeas in the West seems difficult due to problems getting to good habitat and that habitat being very high and rocky, they also seem to be always on the move and difficult to track.

[leptraps]

One of the locations that I visited numerous times was Horse Shoe Mountain southwest of Fair Play, Colorado. The road (Two Track boulder covered with fox holes) up to the Caldera. The collecting along this road which is above the tree line can be excellent. During a trip to Horse Shoe Mountain in 1993,we had hiked to the caldera, the sky clouded over and it began to snow. About 2" inches of wet heavy snow. Twenty minutes later, out came the sun and the snow was gone in ten or fifteen minutes.

Collecting above the treeline can be absolutely fabulous.

[wingedwishes]

Good thread!

I used to chase sulfurs without much success. I then found an area near a botanical garden where they were flying along the border of a pristine forest and the garden. I sat in a hair and waited as they followed the same path along the border and caught them as they came to me.

I had a heck of a time catching skittish Mangrove Skippers. The tide was in and the mud was sucking at my boots, the mangroves were thick, and there were humongous weds everywhere. I had to wave a stick to get through the webs and struggle with getting the net through the branches while the heat and humidity with no breeze tried to kill me. I saw many skippers. I caught none that day. Interesting that no skippers were in the spider webs either. I did find many dwarf seahorses and a curious shark that day though.

[58chevy]

Once on my lunch break I discovered a large stand of Cassia near downtown Houston. From a distance it looked like some butterflies were flying around it. When I got closer, I could tell they were Phoebis philea (orange-barred sulphur). I went to the car & grabbed my net, but they were too quick. I went back the next day and observed their flight pattern. The males would fly back & forth along the hedge, patrolling for females. I hid between the bushes and popped out when I saw one coming. It worked. Over a couple of weeks I got a nice series of both sexes on my lunch break. Unfortunately, the Cassia hedge was destroyed by a hurricane a couple of years later.

[leptraps]

Kill Pecker Dunes, Wyoming. Located North of Rock Springs, Wyoming. My first piece of advice, never go into the Killpecker Dune "ALONE". There are not a lot of Butterflys, moths, now that is another story. I currently I have seven (7) Schmidt Boxes full of UFO Noctuid moths.

Kill Pecker Dunes is an extensive airid desert. It is part of the extensive Red Desert. You enter in the South West corner and if you bear to the right at the forks, you will exit the Dunes onto SR28. The distance is a little under 40 miles. Should your car break down, it is a long hot dusty walk.

For the most part, the roads are all gravel and are maintained. There are many active gas wells. I have encountered "Rough Necks" that service the wells.

There is a bright Red Long Horn Beetle that occurs in the Dunes. I have a friend who is a Coleopterist. He went nuts over the beetles.

Again, do not go in alone. It is a long hot walk out.

[gaspipe]

Jan 26, 2021 8:10:09 GMT -8 58chevy said:

Once on my lunch break I discovered a large stand of Cassia near downtown Houston. From a distance it looked like some butterflies were flying around it. When I got closer, I could tell they were Phoebis philea (orange-barred sulphur). I went to the car & grabbed my net, but they were too quick. I went back the next day and observed their flight pattern. The males would fly back & forth along the hedge, patrolling for females. I hid between the bushes and popped out when I saw one coming. It worked. Over a couple of weeks I got a nice series of both sexes on my lunch break. Unfortunately, the Cassia hedge was destroyed by a hurricane a couple of years later.

A guy jumping in and out of some bushes; sounds like a good way to get arrested.

[gaspipe]

Just thinking , time of season makes huge difference for some species . When male Speyeria first emerge they zip around looking for females ( that usually haven’t emerged yet) and the best you can do is sit and wait for them to return and plan your swoop . Once I had a net in each hand ; when trying to catch them I must have looked like a Samari .

[mothman27]

Phoebis sennae, still don't have one in my collection. They were all over in FL where I was staying but impossible to get. I have only ever seen two here in Indiana.

[trehopr1]

Indeed Tim, that species does not necessarily always come easy.

I have had a 50/50 "netting" rate with it even when I've seen them
light on purple clover. They just don't sit long to get some GOOD
nourishment. Rather like an english woman sipping tea.

And forget it once they are on the wing...

[Paul K]

Jan 26, 2021 17:52:32 GMT -8 mothman27 said:

Phoebis sennae, still don't have one in my collection. They were all over in FL where I was staying but impossible to get. I have only ever seen two here in Indiana.

Try next time to find a stream or small creek, even a large puddle could work as well. Use a lot of urine ( few litres ) to moist a sandy or muddy spot. Males should come to drink salts.
It works well for SE Asian Catopsilia which is related to Neotropic Phoebis.