Professor Art Shapiro’s annual beer-for-a-butterfly hunt ended Monday (Jan. 26), later than he expected but still with another early catch — and another win for him.
Shapiro searches for the first cabbage white butterfly to emerge each year in Sacramento, Solano or Yolo counties, and charts the first flights to study biological response to climate change. He promises a pitcher of beer to anyone who finds a Pieris rapae before he does.
Shapiro's catch
Shapiro caught the cabbage white at 12:30 p.m. in West Sacramento, on undeveloped acreage near a creek and railroad tracks he has been visiting for decades.
“I was sufficiently sure today would be the day that I took my net and was prepared to sweep the vegetation with it to kick up any individuals that were sunbathing (‘dorsal basking’) in the dilute sunlight in order to raise their body temperature to the level needed for flight,” Shapiro wrote in an email.
That turned out not to be necessary; a male butterfly emerged and proved to be “a very easy catch,” he said.
He waited until this morning (Jan. 27) to see if anyone else had caught a bug but had not yet brought it in, then said he considered the contest over.
The first cabbage white has been found later than Jan. 26 only three times since 2000, although it has been spotted as late as Feb. 22 over the 43 years Shapiro has been holding the contest. He’s only lost three times.
The butterfly requires a string of 60-degree weather before it will fly.
“The very wet December of 2014 laid the groundwork for tule fog this month, which we hadn’t really seen since the drought began,” Shapiro said. “The cold, foggy weather certainly played a role in delaying emergence.”
Ten minutes after his discovery, Shapiro spotted another butterfly: a mourning cloak — the first of the year. And five minutes after that, a fiery skipper butterfly landed at Shapiro’s feet.
He said that find was “much more significant,” as it is the earliest emergence he has ever seen for the butterfly. “The fiery skipper normally is first recorded around here in March or even April,” he said.
Last year he spotted the first fiery skipper on Feb. 21, which at that time set the record for earliest emergence.
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Dave Jones, Dateline, 530-752-6556, dljones@ucdavis.edu