They are tortoiseshells!

They are not moths; they are tough, yet harmless.

That's what is important about all those butterflies you see flitting all over the Sisters Country when the temperature rises to above 60 degrees (fahrenheit). To be specific, they are California Tortoiseshells, Nymphallis californica.

Over the past few years, literally millions of these handsome and hardy butterflies were produced in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada and as far north as Alberta, Canada. The huge eruption in numbers and expansion of range has entomologists scratching their heads, but whatever the reasons, we have tortoiseshells here by the tens of thousands.

The most interesting thing about tortoiseshells is their ability to survive our cold winters as adults. Most butterflies we see in summer, winter over as eggs or chrysalids, all snug and cozy in their silken sacks, but not the tortoiseshell, they're tough. The adults you see flying about are those that emerged late last summer when the caterpillars metamorphosed, after pigging out on the abundant ceonothus brush around Sisters.

When the sun started slowly moving south and the days began to get colder (and the nights even more so), the butterflies hid themselves away for the winter. They found safe hidy-holes under logs, rocks, beneath the bark of snags, in woodsheds, piles of plywood and outbuildings - anywhere out of the direct cold and harm's way.

It is the remarkable blood of over-wintering insects such as the tortoiseshell (and mourning cloaks) that saves their bacon. It isn't "blood" as we know it, but a greenish liquid that carries oxygen and The Stuff of Life - and believe-it-or-not, antifreeze - to the insect's cells.

The colder it gets, the better the antifreeze. Among the earliest flowering plants of spring is our abundant manzanita, an all-important fuel stop for the tortoiseshells exploring around the Sisters Country. As soon as the weather warms up and remains that way (and it will, honest), the tortoiseshells will begin mating, smell their way to the first ceonothus bushes and lay their eggs - and the miraculous Cycle of Life will roll on...