ATLANTIC CITY — Winter blizzards and flooding followed by a warm spring have produced one pleasant surprise — an abundance of butterflies.
Until recently, few people tracked southern New Jersey's butterflies with the same vigilance paid to its migratory birds.
But Jack Connor, a butterfly hobbyist from Port Republic and a writing professor at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, decided in 2008 to launch an Internet butterfly database and encouraged friends and acquaintances to report their sightings.
"I started it for a couple friends. I thought we'd get six or seven folks using the Google public spreadsheet," he said.
Last year, he had 50 observers who posted 8,000 sightings. Already this spring, he has had 2,000 observations of butterflies with names such as hackberry emperor and red-spotted purple. New Jersey is home to just 100 native species and about 60 more occasional vagrants.
"Last year we had a tough butterfly year with a cold, wet spring. It was a real down year," he said.
But by June 1, observers in southern New Jersey had tallied 58 species and in good numbers. Lots of blooms mean lots of butterflies, he said.
"We had all the water and rain followed by a mild spring. So everyone is talking about how the plants are better," he said.
Connor credited the increasing popularity of birding for the growing awareness about New Jersey's butterflies.
"More people are buying binoculars with close-focus capabilities so they can study butterflies," he said.
Louise Zemaitis, of West Cape May, bands monarch butterflies each summer to track their migration to Mexico. She said during this year's World Series of Birding on May 15, her team found 14 species of butterfly, including a migrant to New Jersey called a red admiral.
"It's extraordinary. The butterflies we've been seeing are emigrants from the south," she said. "Everyone thinks of Monarchs being the migrating butterfly, but there are many others that do as well. Maybe it has to do with the host plants having an extraordinary spring or maybe the winter wasn't as cold where they hatched."
At Leaming's Run Garden in Middle Township, owner Jack Aprill has noticed the surge in butterflies this spring.
"We have a butterfly expert who visits here quite a bit. He said he's counted 65 different species," Aprill said.
The walking garden tour has a special area designated as a butterfly garden. But Aprill said that's just marketing.
"The idea of a butterfly garden is a myth. If you're planting a flower garden, you're really planting it for butterflies," he said.
The garden gets its share of Monarch butterflies every summer. One year, the star of the garden was a giant swallowtail butterfly the size of bluebird.
"The fortunate thing about Cape May County is we have the northern butterflies in the summer and the southern butterflies," Aprill said. "It's a great place for butterflying because of that."