Nabokov’s Satyr, Ramsey Canyon, AZ (Mike Watson)
Researching range-restricted, spring-flying butterflies that I might see on my recent California & Arizona Specialities Birdquest tour I was struck by the fact that most of the special butterflies fly in the Arizona ‘second spring’ monsoon season from July to September. However, there are a few that could be seen in the actual springtime of my visit, in early May. One of these caught my eye, Nabokov’s Satyr. Not only as it carries a famous name, but I noted that it belonged to a new butterfly genus for me Cyllopsis, the ‘gemmed satyrs’. Essentially subtle browns, with jewel-like studs embedded on their hindwing borders, like blues. What a wonderful combination! There are more than 30 members of this Neotropical genus, three of which occur in the southern United States: Gemmed Satyr Cyllopsis gemma; Canyonland Satyr C. pertepida and Nabokov’s Satyr C. pyracmon. My pal Craig Robson, who spends part of the year in Southeast Arizona, said the latter was ‘easy anywhere in the mountains on trails/in shade’ and looking at the number of INaturalist.org sightings I thought I should have no trouble in catching up with it in early May. With many pairs of eyes in my group I mentioned that we should be on the lookout for any small brown butterflies and sure enough on our first morning in the Sky Island canyons, at the lovely Madera Canyon near Green Valley, while returning from a successful hike in search of Coppery-tailed Trogon, sharp-eyed Richard spotted one. It was a Nabokov’s, albeit a worn individual with a torn hindwing. Very exciting nevertheless! Thanks Richard! After alighting on a stone, it moved off quickly uphill and into dense scrub and out of reach. Moving with surprising speed at ground level, it skipped through the bases of thorn bushes, a most annoying habit of this species I was to discover in the coming days.
Nabokov’s Satyr, Madera Canyon, AZ (Mike Watson)
Interest in butterflies on our birding tours is very limited, so my opportunities are therefore compressed into a few minutes here and there. The next canyon bottom we visited, the lovely Miller Canyon also produced Nabokov’s Satyr at each stop, but in the heat of the midday they were completely restless and rarely paused for more than a few seconds on their ramblings through the shady understorey of the evergreen oak and Alligator Juniper woodland, when they would angle their wings perpendicular to the shafts of sunlight reaching the leaf litter, in the manner of a grayling back home. This did not allow me enough time to get in position for a photo before they were off again. Goodness me, it was hard work following these pesky creatures round and round a small patch of woodland, before ultimately losing contact, as they made off through the bushes. All too soon, my group returned from a hummingbird feeder sojourn with my co-leaders and that was that.
Nabokov’s Satyr, Ramsey Canyon, AZ (Mike Watson)
They were indeed in each canyon and, finally, it was in Ramsey Canyon, the most famous of all the birding spots in the Huachuca Mountains, that I could finally spend some quality macro time with the satyrs, significantly late in the afternoon when they settled down to visit wet patches of ground in the watercourses and directly under the hummingbird feeders! Most were quite worn by this stage in their flight season and it was more difficult to read their undersides to separate them from the very similar Canyonland Satyr (which is usually found further uphill rather than in the valley bottom) but they were very approachable now. A very satisfying experience to go alongside the other avian treasures of these precious habitats. How many takers for ‘I’ve got a settled Nabokov’s Satyr here’? None at all. We are so few.
Madera Canyon, Arizona - Nabokov’s Satyr habitat, oak and Alligator Juniper woodland (Mike Watson)
The butterfly is named after the Russian/American author Vladimir Nabokov (1899 – 1977), a fascinating character whose most famous work is the 1955 novel Lolita. It is hailed one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century but the subject is such a hot potato now! He was born of Russian nobility but moved gradually westwards, fleeing the Russian Revolution and then Hitler’s Germany, before settling in the United States and gaining citizenship in 1945. Nabokov was a true polymath and as well as an acclaimed author, he was also an accomplished entomologist and has several butterfly and moth species named after both him and his literary works! He wrote in three languages; Russian, English and French, gave boxing lessons and composed chess problems. He lectured at Cornell, (where one of his students was US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg). He was mostly concerned with studying blue butterflies and genetic research later supported his hypothesis that the Polyommatus blues came to the Americas over the Bering Strait in five waves, eventually reaching Chile. I was fascinated to read that Nabokov did not learn to drive, he got his wife Véra to drive him around in search of butterflies and in 1967, he commented ‘The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or Peru. It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all.’ Interestingly ‘his’ satyr was first described in 1867 and the use of his name stems from the description of its subspecies named nabokovi in his honour by Lee D. Miller in 1974, from none other than Ramsey Canyon, Arizona (!). The epithet Nabokov’s was later adopted as the common name for the larger species. I hope it does not get cancelled, as is the current Cornell habit with birds. We would surely end up with some hopeless anodyne alternative.