Diggin' the goo

California Tortoiseshell flits a silent braid through our hiking order, circles three times and then settles, burrows, into the lumpy, smelly mud. "Eeeewwww" murmur the 12 of us.

As it turns out, this was not a renegade butterfly, but rather a normal, probably male specimen that doesn't mind mud, dung and even blood or decaying flesh.

The theory goes that butterflies congregate on mud and such primarily for salts.  Males seem to benefit more from the sodium intake and its boost to reproductive success, with the nutrients often transferred to the female during mating. This extra nutrition helps ensure the eggs survive.

Digging in the goo, 2

My first encounter with a mud-bathing butterfly featured a single California Tortoiseshell come to taste the nectar of the goo on the juniper sage grasslands of Central Oregon, where moisture is elusive, and one could hardly blame.

Here on the Canyon Trail in Silver Falls State Park, a 9200-acre rain forest in Oregon's interior, a kaleidoscope that appeared to be Margined Whites or Mustard Whites flitting in and out of a dank bath, confirmed for us they collect more than moisture and minerals. Based on the fervor, it has to be magic.