Searching for Becker's White Butterflies near Palmdale CA

This desert outing takes us to the Antelope Valley in the southwestern Mojave desert, near Palmdale, California. We're in search of Becker's White (Pontia beckeri) adults and early stages for rearing and life cycle documentary. After a tip from a colleague (thanks, Brian!) a large population was found and filming began.

The butterfly was found in all stages of its life cycle, which made much of this video fairly easy to make. There was even a freshly emerged female (chrysalis still visible in the shots) found mating on one of the host plants! The rearing and detailed life cycle documentation is now being carried-out back in the "laboratory". That video will be released some time in the future.

The soundtrack is another adlib experimental piece called "G'Echo" (Sounds like "Gecko") from the "TimeShift" CD by Technician (yours truly), album and single track available on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/timeshift/id416810514 full artist discography and CDs available at HTTP://technician.jcmdi.com

Much more info, photos and documentaries are available, free to the public, at JCMDI.COM.

Enjoy!

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[maravaluz]

my son loves butterflies!

[jcmegabyte]

It's a very interesting hobby, to raise and study them - so much to see and learn. Thanks for watching and commenting! :-)

[louiseduvee]

Is your channel under-played, or what? This is fascinating.

[jcmegabyte]

I'm sure there are lots of people out there who would enjoy seeing my work, but you know how show biz is - without big money pushing material out to the public, the best you can do have lots of patience and wait to be found.

Fortunately things have changed and it's really great that we now have venues like YouTube to broadcast our works. This has opened-up a whole new world of opportunitiy for many of us creative types!

Thanks so much for watching and commenting =)

[notmyselfsober]

wwwwwwwwwoooooooowwwwww i never seen a butterfly or a catapillar

[jcmegabyte]

I bet that felt weird! XD

[jcmegabyte]

It's interesting to know that those huge outbreaks happen in other places, too.

Heavy rainfall and host plant growth creates perfect conditions for the larvae, so their predators can't keep up!

The massive migrations are still somewhat of a mystery, although it's probably just an evolved behavior that's contributed to the species' success.

Here, they seem to migrate mostly to the NNW, and it's supected that they use the Earth's magnetic field lines to navigate. Interesting stuff! :-)

[Pebbleprominent]

In Britain, there was a MASSIVE influx of Painted ladies as well. They all came up from Northern Africa. The first taste of the influx I found was when I was on an offshore island on the North of Ireland, and There hundreds simply flying in from the sea. I was sitting on the shore watching them fly over my head.

[shadowsniperz]

wow how many did they say there were

[jcmegabyte]

...it wasn't just your yard - there were millions and millions of them all over southern California. There was even a few news reports about how many there were. :-)