[TN-Butterflies] anniversary sulphur trifecta

Barb and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary today. We decided to have 
lunch at the Harrow Road Cafe in Rugby, Morgan County, so we drove up in time 
to get our favorite table, which has a nice view of a bird feeder (unhappily 
not stocked, so no birds to view during lunch). When we finished, Barb wanted 
to check out a road that leads down to nearby White Oak Creek where she has 
found some nice birds in the past; it is named Horseshoe Bend Rd. (one of many 
thousands world-wide, no doubt).  We drove to the end of this road and 
immediately noticed a nice stand of blooming asters attended by numerous 
sulphurs.  I checked the county list for Morgan County at BAMONA and discovered 
that several sulphurs were missing from that list, including Clouded, which was 
present and easy to get a documentary photo of for anniversary and county 
record sulphur number 1.  Then a Little Yellow flew in and landed in the 
asters--voila! anniversary and county record sulphur number 2.  Just as we were 
about to leave, a tiny sulphur flew by and also landed in the asters.  It 
proved to be my first TN Dainty Sulphur and, voila!, just like that the 
anniversary and county record sulphur trifecta for Morgan County was complete.

Morgan County is not quite as far east as Polk County, where a photo of Dainty 
Sulphur was obtained by Julius Basham earlier this year and where the 
easternmost documented record for TN has thus far occurred, but it is pretty 
close to that far east.  

It should prove possible to find this small and lovely sulphur in more counties 
of middle and even east Tennessee before the end of this butterfly season, so 
keep a look-out as you examine the aster patches during the next couple of 
weeks.

Steve Stedman
Cookeville (Putnam County)

Note: I attach a photo of today's Dainty Sulphur for the delight of those who 
do not appear to salivate over the much better photos in the butterfly guides.

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