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Professor Art Shapiro appears to have snagged the first Pieris rapae of the season — waiting out a freight train to win his own beer-for-a-butterfly contest once again. He caught the cabbage white at 1:15 p.m. Monday (Jan. 21), Inauguration Day, and later noted that he made the winning catch of 2009 on President Obama’s first Inauguration Day.

Shapiro

“Yes (Obama’s the charm?)” Shapiro wrote as the subject for his email announcing his 2013 catch.

Two days earlier (Jan. 19) he sent an email with the subject line “No,” meaning no luck yet in snagging a cabbage white. Shapiro, of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, has been running the contest for 40 years, in Yolo, Solano and Sacramento counties, to aid in his studies of biological response to climate change.

“I ‘knew’ at 9 a.m. (Monday) that today would be the day,” Shapiro wrote in his “Yes” email. “The air just felt different; the sun already felt warm, although the morning low at my place had been 32F at 6:50 a.m. (That was the first time in 12 mornings that it hadn't gone below freezing."

He went to the Yolo Bypass, West Sacramento, where "at 1:01 p.m. a male rapae showed up, flying from E to W along the north side of the RR tracks, just E of the I-80 overpass."

Freight train gets in the way

“Unfortunately, at the exact same moment, a fast freight was approaching from the E and I was not about to race it across the tracks! (I was on the south side.) As the train roared by, the butterfly rose straight up and flew over the overpass.”

Hmmm, what to do about the contest? “I’ve known all along that the day would come when I would see the first rapae but be unable to catch it,” he wrote. “The protocol for such an eventuality is: I count the sight record, but keep the contest open until someone actually catches one and turns it in. I figured this would be the year I’d have to do that.

“But, after the train passed, I milled around looking to see if the beast would return. It did. At 1:15 it appeared out of nowhere (I think it descended vertically from above) and went directly to where it had been when I first saw it, where I caught it easily and immediately.”

He described it as a male of proper (post-diapause) January phenotype. He waited until about 2 p.m. but saw no more rapae.

Since 1972, the first flight of the cabbage white has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20 — making this year’s first flight about average. Shapiro has said the cabbage white is emerging in this region a week or so earlier on average than it did 30 years ago.

Professor can 'stand down'

Shapiro noted a very light south wind Monday afternoon, “which demonstrates that the huge dome of high pressure that has sat over us for about two weeks has now passed to our east; there are also some cirrus to the west.”

“However, at best we will get a passing shower Wednesday. The turn to much wetter weather will take a while to get here.

“But who cares? Pieris rapae is out, and I can ‘stand down.’ It is spring because I say so, and I said it first.

“And thank you, Mr. President!”