Angled Leafwing at National Butterfly Center, 2-9-25

We had a very hard freeze in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas in mid January with temperatures dropping to the mid twenties and staying below freezing for ten hours.  Two weeks ago I went over to the National Butterfly Center and found most plants heavily damaged.  A couple of hours turned up only four species of butterflies.  A return yesterday after a couple of weeks of warm weather found things looking much better.  Despite the very dry conditions, plants are leafing out as they do in February down here.  White Brush and Elbo Bush were blooming and attracting butterflies.  Best of my 25 species was this fresh Angled Leafwing.  I wonder if it's an offspring from the ones we had last November.

Tropical Leafwings were also out.

I found five pecies of hairstreaks but missed the Lacey's seen the day before. Here's a Silver-banded Hairstreak.

This Clytie Ministreak was lacking the red pigments making me wonder if it was something more exotic.  Nothing from Mexico in the field guide matched it.  It's just a weird Clytie.

Here's a more normal winter form Clytie.

The Dusky-blue Goundstreaks were looking sharp.

Even the common Gray Hairstreaks were nice to see after the recent freeze.

Orange Sulphur is always one of the first spring butterflies across Texas.

So spring is on the way and things are looking up.

• Orange Sulphur 1
• Lyside Sulphur 5
• Little Yellow 5
• Silver-banded Hairstreak 1
• Gray Hairstreak 6
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 3
• Dusky-blue Groundstreak 5
• Clytie Ministreak 4
• Ceraunus Blue 3
• Reakirt's Blue 6
• Fatal Metalmark 5
• American Snout 20
• Phaon Crescent 2
• Red Admiral 6
• Mexican Bluewing 2
• Tropical Leafwing 6
• Angled Leafwing 1
• Brown Longtail 1
• Funereal Duskywing 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 5
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 5
• Laviana White-Skipper 2
• Common Sootywing 1
• Southern Skipperling 1
• Fiery Skipper 1

Last Butterflies before the Freeze at NBC, 1/18/25

The strongest cold front of the winter is scheduled to blast in tomorrrow and the butterflies at the National Butterfly Center were out enjoying one last glorious warm day.  The wind was from the south yesterday however today it had already switched from the north and despite that, the temperature was still in the 80's.  Now sure of the effect of this on the species composition of butterflies.  There were no real Mexican rarities but a few local uncommon species were out, some pretty fresh.  Best was this Caballo (formerly Potrillo) Skipper.

A White-patched Skipper was close by.

And later a Texas Powdered-Skipper popped up in the same Azureum patch.

And with it a fresh Marius Hairstreak.  It was a lifer for visiting butterflier Jeff Pavlik who I notice is a couple butterflies ahead of me on eButterfly.  But I recently discovered a few Australian lifers while putting bugs into iNaturalist so maybe I can get back ahead.

Here's a good looking Dusky-blue Groundstreak.

And the humble but still sharp looking Gray Hairstreak.

John Rosford found the bug of the day.  I have yet to ID this litle lady beetle but I'm pretty sure it's a lifer.

35 species is pretty good for mid January.  In a couple of days there won't be any and then we start the slow build up into spring.

• Pipevine Swallowtail 2
• Southern Dogface 2
• Large Orange Sulphur 2
• Lyside Sulphur 6
• Little Yellow 5
• Sleepy Orange 2
• Marius Hairstreak 1
• Gray Hairstreak 3
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 3
• Dusky-blue Groundstreak 1
• Ceraunus Blue 4
• Reakirt's Blue 1
• Fatal Metalmark 1
• American Snout 10
• Mexican Fritillary 1
• Texan Crescent 1
• Phaon Crescent 4
• Red Admiral 4
• White Peacock 3
• Mexican Bluewing 1
• Monarch 2
• Queen 4
• Dorantes Longtail 1
• Brown Longtail 2
• Potrillo Skipper 1
• Texas Powdered-Skipper 1
• White-patched Skipper 1
• Funereal Duskywing 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 5
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 2
• Laviana White-Skipper 5
• Clouded Skipper 4
• Fiery Skipper 3
• Sachem 2
• Eufala Skipper 6

Happyy New Year from the NBC! 1/1/25

Weather was forecast to be cloudy, cool and drippy so I wasn't sure how to spend this New Years Day.  I wanted to get up early and go birding but the idiot neighbors celebrated in idiot fashin last night and the neighborhood sounded like a war zone.  Hope no one got hit by celebratory gun fire.  But the morning was bright and warmer than I expected so I ran over to the National Butterfly Center.  The sun would pop out periodically and the butterflie activity would pick up.  Best butterfly for the new year was this handsome Falcate Skipper.

Jon Rosford has become quite the insect photographer.  He called me over to show me a caterpillar feeding on the Texas Lantana.  He knew it was a hairstreak and thought maybe a Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak.  Well I've never seen a hairstreak caterpillar so I was happy to get some shots.  After getting home I checked out photos on the BOA site and it didn't quite seem to match to me.  So I thought "How about Marius Hairstreak?"  Photos seemed to match.  I entered the photos into iNaturalist and Marius Hairstreak was the AI driven conclusion also.

Here's an adult Marius Hairstrak.  They have been fairly common this fall/winter.  I saw one just like it at Quinta Mazatlan yesterday.

On the lantana with the Marius cat was this Olive-clouded Skipper.  The second image is one I photographed yesterday at Quinta.  I like the red evil eye!

Quite few butterflies were on the wing but nothing else rare.  I may enter a list later.