Saturday, June 7, 2014

National Butterfly Center, 6/6/14

Four hours at the National Butterfly Center turned up 35 species.  There's lots of flowers in bloom and it's just a matter of time till something good shows up.  Best butterfly today was this Ornythion Swallowtail



It's been a while since I've seen a Common Streaky-Skipper.  This one seemed partial to landing on dead flower heads for perfect camouflage.

Lantana Scrub-Hairstreaks are showing up all over the RGV.  The winter rains were good for the their host plant, Texas Lantana.  Now I need to find one with black eyes.


There's been a few Crimson Patches around the park for the past few months.  Today I also saw several of their caterpillars.



The snake herbs have had a good colony of Cyna Blues this year.


And a really nice Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak


And here's our dragonfly for the day, a very cool Flag-tailed Spinylegs.  Members of the family Gomphidae are referred to as clubtails and this one has one heck of a club.