Brush Country Butterflies, 10/23/16

The Texas Butterfly Festival is coming up in a week and one of the trips I am leading was looking pretty grim.  I'm supposed to take a group up to Sal del Rey tract of the Lower Rio Grande NWR to look for some uncommon things like Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreak, Desert Checkered-Skipper and Erichson's and East-Mexican White-Skippers.  They were all present up there last fall but when I checked the area a couple of weeks ago everything was fried.  The long hot summer had taken its toll and none of the specialties were present.

So today I thought I would try CR 30 which is about five miles to the east in Willacy county.  When I passed through there two weeks ago there weren't many butterflies but at least it was green and a few things like lantana was blooming.  Well, I made the right choice.  I found fifteen Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreaks.

A real surprise were two Blue Metalmarks, a boy and a girl.

And there were a few Desert Checkered-Skippers.

After failing to find any Julia's Skippers the other day at the National Butterfly Center it was nice to see some today.

Here's a very fresh Clouded Skipper.

Then I ran over to Brushline Road to try the MoVac Road again.  It was a little greener and I could see it had rained some.  Still not very many butterflies but on the way out I managed to run across two Erichson's White-Skippers.  So it turned out to be a good day and things are looking better for the Festival trip.