OLD FRIENDS IN NEW WORLD W I L F R I D S. GEORGE
June weeks in Toronto—would the insects of southern Canada differ much from those I collect in Suffolk?
THREE
T h e spring of 1974 was late in Ontario, but arriving on lOth June the airport grasses waved much as they had at home. But my hay-fever had vanished (only in the third week did it trouble me a little). In the suburb of Scarborough I looked for weeds. Our hosts had groundsel, shepherd's purse, white clover, yarrow and dandelion, and elsewhere I saw hop trefoil, creeping thistle, meadow buttercup, creeping buttercup, dock, wall barley, fat hen and pineapple-weed. T h e house-sparrows and starlings I knew, but the 'robins' were far too big! Toronto is a great city of cars, concrete and open spaces, cut into by big semi-wooded ravines fifty to a hundred foot deep, where streams have eroded the grey clay soil as they tumble towards Lake Ontario. In these wild parks butterflies abound, including many species of Skippers. Some much resembled our Large, Small and Dingy Skippers, but were not the species I knew. Others were quite different—many were larger and darker. Canadian 'browns' rather resembled our Ringlets and Small Heaths, but were Little Woods Euptychia cymela and Piain Ringlets Coenonympha inornata. What looked to me like Clouded Yellows and their pale varieties, dashing over the wild red clover, were in fact their American relatives the Alfalfa Butterfly Colias eurytheme. Only once did I stalk our familiar Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta, and only once did I see its food-plant the stingingnettle (a fact that made collecting less painful than near Suffolk streams). Brambles, too, were absent, replaced by raspberries, and I never saw holly nor ivy—the winter must be too cold. A relative of the blackberry flowered profusely, attracting the great orange Monarch Butterflies Danaus plexippus—surely the great entomological sight of North America. A second rare British butterfly—our Camberwell Beauty (their Mourning Cloak) Nymphalis antiopa we saw three times, but all were very ragged insects, long out from hibernation. T h a t they had been on the wing some time was evident when I found a colony of a hundred or so of their larvae almost fully-grown on a willow bush. I was surprised to find very few 'white' butterflies, but perhaps there was a shortage of food. I finally took three of our Small Whites Pieris rapae Aying near a patch of cruciferous weeds. I would never have believed myself capable of chasing a 'cabbagewhite' u p a steep bank, disregarding a Monarch on the way! Another familiar pest was our Setaceous Hebrew Character Moth
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(their Spotted Cutworm Moth) Amathes c-nigrum in our hosts' garden. What did impress me was the abundance of Dragonflies Odonata, and Robber-flies Asilidae, Diptera, which hunt for, and lay in wait for, other insects to eat. Many species of each must have been present. My own favourites the Hover-flies Syrphidae, Diptera were less noticeable, but our little Syritta pipiens• was about, and I found the two bee-mimicking hover-flies Eristalis tenax and Merodon equestris had followed man to Toronto for his drains and for his daffodils, just as they had to Aldeburgh. We got out of the city too. Everywhere there are plenty of trees, but many are (or were) American elms. It is hard to find a view without their tall spreading skeletons, for almost all had succumbed to Dutch elm disease. And now something is killing their Lombardy-poplars. Nearly two hundred miles north, at South River (a sort of Canadian 'Yoxford' on rocky soil) I ran down one of the big yellow swallowtail butterflies on a rough gravelroad through the woods. It was not our Papilio machaon, but the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail P. glaucns—a very fine insect which I never saw at Toronto (where the Black Swallowtail P. polyxenes flew). A fritillary butterfly was darker than those I knew, and a few Lady's Slipper Orchids grew under the trees. Further east, beside the St. Lawrence Seaway (guarded by a real martello-tower) what looked between our Large and Small Coppers proved to be a Bronze Copper Butterfly Lycaena thoe, and here I took my first Pearl Crescent Butterfly Phyciodes tharos, quite unlike anything at home, orange and dainty. And, inevitably, there was 'the one that got away', a big Banded Purple Butterfly Limenitis arthemis, soaring up into the trees of a Toronto ravine much as its cousin, our White Admiral, is apt to do when pursued. My botany is not up to my entomology, but I consider I saw woody-nightshade, dog-rose, yellow toadflax, bladder campion, white campion, tall melilot, and tansy, beside many unknown plants. Both lupins and irises were seen, but both were blue, not the yellow flowers I know at home. The squirrels were rarely grey, mostly black, and the little chipmunks were delightful. Twice we saw rabbits, and several times ground-hogs. Perhaps we were lucky not to meet a skunk, but.it was easy to teil when we drove past a corpse on the road. We heard a lot about them! Raccoons (who raid Toronto dustbins) had also been run over, as had porcupines. Beavers showed their presence by patches of dead, drowned trees, but the moose and the bears stayed in the woods. Clearly, Canada is a great country for a naturalist. Wilfrid S. George, M.P.S.,
Marigold, Linden Road, Aldeburgh, IP15 5JH.