Hoary Skipper at Santa Ana NWR, 5-31-16

After having visited Santa Ana NWR each of the past three days for birds and butterflies, today I had to make it four days in a row after Javi Gonzalez found a fresh Hoary Skipper yesterday.  I spent nearly four hours looking for it, had given up and was leaving when guess what I found?  Only it wasn't Javi's Hoary.  It was a different one.  So with the beat up one he found a couple of weeks ago that makes three of this pretty rare bug at Santa Ana.  It was only the second one I have ever seen.

Three days ago I took a hot afternoon walk at Santa Ana hoping to find something good over there and I did.  This East-Mexican White-Skipper was on the tour road just past the canopy walk.

Other stuff I saw along the tour road included Common Mestra and Mimosa Skipper.

Then Sunday morning visiting birders found a Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher at the refuge so I ran over and failed to see it but did see this Two-barred Flasher.

There were at least a half dozen Pale-banded Crescents.

Yesterday I went back again to give the Sulphur-belly another shot when I found this Banded Peacock.

This is proving to be a good summer for Mexican Bluewing.  They have been hard to find the past couple of years.

Then today I went back for the Hoary Skipper.  While looking for it I found an ovipositing Brown-banded Skipper.  Barbados Cherry is the host plant.

After searching for a couple of hours, I walked up the tour road and checked out the Willow Lakes area.  A large number of the granjeno (spiny hackberry) bushes were completely stripped of leaves.  Upon closer inspection I discovered the culprits, American Snout caterpillars.

Walking back to the visitors center I found a Pearl Crescent which has been in short supply lately.

So here's a compound list from the past four visits to Santa Ana NWR.

• Giant Swallowtail 6
• Checkered White 1
• Great Southern White 8
• Cloudless Sulphur 2
• Large Orange Sulphur 8
• Lyside Sulphur 20
• Little Yellow 5
• Mimosa Yellow 5
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Dusky-blue Groundstreak 8
• Clytie Ministreak 15
• Western Pygmy-Blue 1
• Cassius Blue 4
• Reakirt's Blue 4
• Rounded Metalmark 3
• American Snout 50
• Gulf Fritillary 1
• Zebra Heliconian 2
• Mexican Fritillary 1
• Bordered Patch 3
• Elada Crescent 2
• Texan Crescent 8
• Pale-banded Crescent 6
• Phaon Crescent 5
• Pearl Crescent 1
• White Peacock 3
• Banded Peacock 1
• Red-spotted Admiral 1
• Mexican Bluewing 6
• Common Mestra 4
• Tawny Emperor 10
• Carolina Satyr 5
• Monarch 10
• White-striped Longtail 2
• Brown Longtail 6
• Two-barred Flasher 1
• Mimosa Skipper 3
• Mazans Scallopwing 1
• Hoary Skipper 1
• Brown-banded Skipper 1
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper15
• Laviana White-Skipper 20
• Turk's-cap White-Skipper 5
• Fawn-spotted Skipper 5
• Clouded Skipper 5
• Whirlabout 5
• Southern Broken-Dash 10
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 10
• Eufala Skipper 3
• East Mexican White-Skipper 1