Susan Muller, A year after attempts to re-establish the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly in Howard County appeared to show promise, not one of the official state insects can be found in the county. But Susan Muller isn't giving up her part in a regional effort to bring the colorful, but delicate native back.

The recreation and parks natural resources worker plans to shift tactics and try again, concentrating her efforts on one protected spot along a stream off Route 108 near Clarksville.

"It'll happen. I thought it would take a year and boom - they'd be here," she said yesterday, as she and Anne Patterson of Columbia dug up Canadian thistle, an "exotic, invasive" plant that threatens to overwhelm the native turtlehead she planted for the butterflies.

The breeding ground is enclosed by a frame structure covered with heavy plastic netting built by an Eagle Scout to keep the deer off. Later, the netting was extended over the frame's top, to keep birds away.

The butterfly - adorned with the orange, red, black and white colors of Maryland's founder Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore - was named the state's official insect in 1973, after a campaign by the Maryland Entomological Society.

But depredations by deer and rampant development have destroyed habitat to the point that the butterflies are rarely seen in the wild anymore - thus the interest in reviving them.

Last June, Muller found a Baltimore checkerspot butterfly in Clarksville that bred on a turtlehead plant she had placed there. But later she found evidence that birds may have been eating the caterpillars, and a heavy rainstorm during their breeding time produced local flooding that may have washed away more of the delicate creatures.

"I really don't think any successfully mated," she said. "I think it needs more plants and caterpillars in one spot."

Jay W. McRoberts, who breeds the butterflies at his home in western Montgomery County, said progress is tenuous, at best, now.

"I think we'll make this project work," he said, but another several years of quiet developmental effort to produce more butterflies is needed.

About 35 of the insects survived the winter at his home, he said, and "half hatched and are flying around. It's early," he said - too early to tell how many butterflies may breed this year. Others, members of the Washington Area Butterfly Club, have been trying to breed Baltimore checkerspots at home, and also find them in the wild.

Pat Durkin, who helped found the Washington Area Butterfly Club, said she found some encouraging signs along a power company right-of-way near Thurmont, along the Washington-Frederick county line last weekend - about 20 checkerspots in two nearby locations.

"We were really happy to find them," she said, after years of seeing fewer and fewer butterflies there. She also found evidence of deer feeding on the breeding plants, and she vowed to return and take action to protect the vital turtleheads.

Muller said she is not upset, because she realizes setbacks are to be expected. It took years, for example, for deer and development to virtually eliminate the natural habitat for the Baltimore checkerspot, so it may take a few years to reverse that trend.

"It's a big learning experience. I'm not discouraged at all," she said.

"It's a hard thing to set up a new habitat for anything," Durkin said.

The original idea in using four sites was to provide habitat that the migrating insects could move to throughout the county. But Muller said she may have over-reached a bit.

This fall, she hopes to plant more turtlehead plants - used by the butterfly for breeding. Next spring, although county funds are tight, she wants to buy and release 200 to 300 more caterpillars, hoping that in June, 2003, enough males and females will emerge at the same time for their brief breeding period that a lasting colony will be started.