Finishing up 2025 at the NBC, 12/27-28/25

 A cold front was scheduled to hit the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas on the 29th so I took advantage of the 85F warm weather at the National Butterfly Center.  As had been the case lately, the park had plenty of good butterflies though nothing earth shattering.  The Northern Faceted-Skipper (Malicious Skipper) in the ditch has been a lifer butterfly for most.  I got my best shots of it.

Butterflies in the Family Nymphalidae have only four legs.  But they are insects so where are the other two legs?  The front pair of legs are reduced in size.  In the case of this Pavon Emperor they are day glow green and flank the green proboscis.

I've seen more Red-lined Scrub-Hairstreaks this fall than I had in total the past twenty years.

Lots of Western Pygmy Blues lately.

Early on the 28th Ryan Rodriguez found a Clench's Greenstreak.  Later in the day I thought I ad had found a second.  But this scruffy bug turned out to be a Telea Hairstreak.  The PM band is hard to see.

Here's a nice Marius Hairstreak.  It has gray eyes as do other members of the Genus Rekoa.

One of the better Band-celled sister I've ever seen.

The 28th finished with this spectacular Ruby-spotted Swallowtail putting on a show.

Unfortunately for me I missed two fantastic butterflies.  Kristy Baker has a fresh Guatemalan Leafwing in her yard.  There are only a handful of records in the USA.  The one I saw was pretty scruffy.  At least eight people made the 40 mile drive to her yard and all missed it.  The second fatastic butterfly was a Rusty-tipped Page found by Jim Snyder at Resaca de la Palma.  He only got one shot of this large congener of the Malachite.  Having butterflied a lot in the tropics he had seen many and had no idea it was so rare up here and reported it a little late.

It's 56F as I write this on the 30th.  But we warm to the 80s again in a couple of days so there no reason we can't get some more of these rare butterflies.