‘Antifreeze’ in blood allows butterfly to snub the chill
Butterflies flying around in February?
An orange butterfly with “antifreeze in its blood” was fluttering around Point Pelee National Park and Ojibway Sunday in February.
That’s the earliest documented sighting of a flying butterfly in eastern Canada and the earliest sighting of an eastern comma butterfly on record, Steve Pike, the Windsor Essex Nature Sightings Facebook page moderator and Point Pelee butterfly record compiler, said Monday.
“It was quite a rush,” said Pike, who saw the butterfly with two other naturalists near Point Pelee’s marsh. “I knew it could possibly be a chance of a lifetime to see the earliest flying butterfly in eastern Canada. These opportunities don’t come very often.”
Pike and naturalists Jeremy Bensette and Jeff Skevington went to Point Pelee on what turned out to be a record warm Feb. 19 in Windsor to see if they could spot butterflies flying in the winter. Bensette of Leamington saw the orange butterfly first, shortly after arriving at the marsh boardwalk parking lot.
The eastern comma butterfly, named because of a silver comma marking under its wings, is one of a few butterflies that could be fluttering around in winter and it shouldn’t die when it turns cold again, Pike said.
“It’s a very fascinating thing,” Pike said. “This particular species actually has antifreeze in its blood and it’s able to not freeze solid over winter in very cold temperatures.”
Pike said some butterflies have sorbitol and glycine in their blood which acts like antifreeze so the butterfly can survive as an adult through the winter. With its wings folded up, the dormant butterfly looks like a leaf.
There was another eastern comma butterfly sighting at Ojibway on Sunday by Jeff and Karen Larson, Pike said. The previous early sighting for an eastern comma butterfly was Feb. 22, 1998 by Fred Urie and Deb Lebert at Point Pelee.
It appears to be a record early sighting for any butterfly in Eastern Canada only because parts of British Columbia have butterflies year-round, Pike said.
Sightings are documented by the Toronto Entomologists’ Association and a new database available in North America for butterfly sightings called e-butterfly. org.
This particular species actually has antifreeze in its blood and it’s able to not freeze solid over winter in very cold temperatures
Pike said during the unusually warm weather the trio of naturalists looking for butterflies Sunday saw a red bat flying around and, at nearby Hillman Marsh, naturalist Blake Mann saw a garter snake.
The Windsor region experienced a record high temperature Sunday. The high of 17.7 Celsius at 3 p.m. Sunday smashed the previous record of 14.2 C in 1994 for Feb. 19.
Monday’s high reached 10 C, not enough to break the record high of 14 C set in 1983.
Tuesday is expected to be rainy with a high of 14 C. Environment Canada’s forecast calls for a high of 16 C Wednesday with sun and cloud and a high of 10 C Thursday in the Windsor area. Temperatures are expected to drop after that with rain in the forecast Friday and a chance of flurries or rain Saturday.