Just over a month ago, Leon and I visited the Tonasket cabin with some friends. It was warm and sunny there and I became a little obsessed with finding and photographing the late butterflies and moths around the property and discovering the birds in the area based on their calls using the Merlin Sound ID app.
The interesting thing about where the pollinators were found is that they were most common on the invasive knapweed that is along the roadsides near our cabin. There were large drifts of knapweed buzzing with all manner of bees, wasps, hornets, moths, and butterflies.
Here is a dump of some photos and at the end some bug names.
The bright orange butterfly is the Mormon fritillary, followed by a beautiful yellow underwing moth, a common wood nymph butterfly, a heath butterfly, a festive tiger beetle, a small copper butterfly, another Mormon fritillary, a light brocade moth, another common wood nymph butterfly, a woodland skipper butterfly, a feathered gothic moth, a green cutworm moth, dingy cutworm moth, woodland skipper butterflies, silvered blue butterflies, grass wave moth, red-shanked grasshopper, British tube wasp.
The last two photos are of some fungal diseases on currant bush and Douglas maple–it was interesting to see these highly infected plants and to know that this is all part of nature and they will likely be fine next year.