Mission Trails

Some kind of blue on locoweed

One of our favorite places to hike in San Diego city is Mission Trails Regional Park. We used to walk in the gorge part of Mission Gorge, or scramble up the Rock Climbers Trail. Now, we tend to avoid crowds by hiking in the North and South Fortuna mountains area. These trails lead through sagebrush scrubland up to cliffs overlooking the gorge.

Butterflies also love this area. The orange tips purposely flit up the path and blues fly among the buckwheat and locoweed plants. The hiking paths provide tempting mud spots for puddling and the hills of course provide places for hill topping.

Bramble Hairstreak

I should mention that this is a relatively new hobby for me. Rowshan became interested in photographing butterflies while we were traveling around the world. However, I've only recently started to learn about their habits, foodplants, and names. Due to this, I might misidentify butterflies (and plants). Any experts out there can feel free to post corrections.

That said, here are some butterflies that we met on our hike.

I can't get over how cute the Bramble Hairstreak is. Just look at its cute little snub nose, big eyes, and striped antennae. It's scientific name is Callophrys dumetorum. In the photos in the books, it looks brighter and the brown on the upper wing is more visible. However, maybe since their flight time is between February and April, this one is a bit faded. There were a lot of them around and there was even a little hilltopping party on one of the smaller hills.

Gabb's Checkerspot

I believe this next butterfly is a Gabb's Checkerspot (Chlosyne gabbii), but again the colors seem a lot lighter than those in the book. Do butterflies fade? 

This last one is a Mormon Metalmark (Apodemia mormo). It is another butterfly that is fond of buckwheat. I hope to plant buckwheat in my garden soon since it is so popular with the butterflies here.

Mormon Metalmark

To identify the butterflies, I've purchased two excellent books. The first is An Introduction to Southern California Butterflies, by Fred Heath with photographs by Herbert Clarke. This is my main reference for information about SoCal butterflies. In fact, the information included on this page about food plants, scientific names, and flight times comes from this book. The other book is Butterflies through Bincoulars: The West by Jeffrey Glassberg. This is an essential field guide to butterflies and contains excellent photos of both side views and top views of butterflies. He also includes a scale on each page so you can get a good idea of the butterfly's actual size.

References
Glassberg, Jeffrey. Butterflies through Binoculars The West. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 


Heath, Fred. An Introduction to Southern California Butterflies. 1st ed. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2004.