Telea Hairstreak at Falcon, 9-16-25

I had not been to Falcon State Park in a few weeks so I thought I would run up and check the bird and bug situation.  The lake levels were still very low, about the same as my last visit.  There were just a few Least Sandpipers and Spotted Sandpipers and tiger beetles were just the regular Ocellated and S-banded.  Here's a Western Giant Swallowtail sucking out minerals from the mud.

So I checked out the butterfly garden.  The park staff has done a pretty good job of keeping a little water on the garden and they have had a bit of rain so the garden was actually looking good.  As has been the case, there wee not a lot of butterflies present.  But I did find a good one as I was watching bees in the blooming kidneywood.  A small hairstreak over my head, back lit agaist a bright sky, turned out to be a rare Telea Hairstreak.  This is the fifth I've ever seen and my first for Starr County.  And she seems to be oviposting.

Bee-wise there were a couple of good ones.  One clump of blooming kidneywood was hosting both of our Valley large Oxaeine Andrenid bee species.  This is the fourth time this summer I have found Mesoxaea texana.  Maybe it's not as rare as they say.

And there were at least a half dozen Protoxaea gloriosa,  It was a great opportunity to compare the two species.

It's shaping up to be a good fall butterfly season in the RGV.

National Butterfly Center, 9/14/25

Well....  My original plan was to go to the HEB supermarket yesterday for groceries and then watch football.  But it was a nice moring so I thought what the hell.  I'll just go to the butterfly park and watch football afterwards.  The decision had disasterous consequences.  Well sort of.

Things started out great with at least a dozen Western Giant Swallowtails in the Mexican Orchid by the nursery.

Then a nice Guava Skipper popped in.  Probably the same one I glimsped last weekend.

Male Red-bordered Metalmarks are vastly under rated.

A few grasskippers were out.  Here is Clouded, Eufala, Wirlabout, and Double-dotted Skippers.

A walk up to the front gardens produced a nice Lanatana Scrub-Hairstreak.

And the first Common Sootywing I've seen in a while.

I'm discovering long-horned bees are a pain to ID except for a few easy ones like the female Tepanec Long-horned Bee with the black blotch on the stripe on abdominal segment four.

A return to the Mexican Orchid tree brought on a flurry of good butterflies.  First it was a Yellow Angled-Sulphur that my camera refused to focus on.  It was only present a few seconds as it often the case.  So I had to settle for a nearby Giant White.

I studied the flock (Do butterflies flock?) of Western Giant Swallowtails searching for an Ornython Swallowtail.  I got one!  It seems most of the ones we get are missing a large chunk of wing.  They have been blown a long ways in the wind and had to fight off a few predators.

Within a couple of minutes all three good butterflies were gone.  I watched the Mexican Orchid a while longer but nothing else unusual showed up.  So I headed for home.  

When I arrived I noticed I had a text from birder, butterflyer, and odester extraordinaire Martin Reid.  A Double-striped Thick-knee had just been found east of San Antonio near Nixon.  Yikes!  It is only the second ever north of Mexico.  As the first was taken as a specimen from the King Ranch in 1961, we've been waiting a long time.  I've seen a number of them in Chiapas near Palenque.

Well it was 2pm and I was exhausted and covered in sweat and sunscreen.  I just wasn't up for the five hour drive to maybe see the bird.  As it turned out a lot of people got it and it was still present in a pasture under a tree as the sun set.  But thick-knees are nocturnal shorebirds so it was just chilling as the hundred or so birders ticked it for their lists.  During the night it would be out feeding and there's a good possibility it might be elsewhere come morning.  So I decided to wait to see if it was refound.

Had I just gone to HEB and then watched football, I might have chased the bird when the word got out.  As I type this the Double-striped Thick-knee has not be refound.  Birders are searching on the private ranch.  I've always got an eye open for these guys as I bird the grasslands of Willacy county.  I guess I will just have to find my own.

Here's today's list of 38 species of butterflies.

• Pipevine Swallowtail 1
• Giant Swallowtail 20
• Ornythion Swallowtail 1
• Giant White 1
• Yellow Angled-Sulphur 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 1
• Large Orange Sulphur 15
• Lyside Sulphur 2
• Little Yellow 2
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Cassius Blue 1
• Ceraunus Blue 8
• Red-bordered Metalmark 3
• American Snout 5
• Gulf Fritillary 1
• Bordered Patch 4
• Phaon Crescent 20
• White Peacock 1
• Mexican Bluewing 1
• Tropical Leafwing 3
• Queen 15
• Soldier 1
• Guava Skipper 2
• Brown Longtail 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 5
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 20
• Desert Checkered-Skipper 1
• Laviana White-Skipper 4
• Common Sootywing 1
• Clouded Skipper 8
• Double-dotted Skipper 3
• Southern Skipperling 1
• Fiery Skipper 1
• Whirlabout 3
• Southern Broken-Dash 1
• Common Mellana 1
• Eufala Skipper 6

CR 30 Teniente Tract LRGV NWR, 8/28/25

The Rio Grande Valley of south Texas has been getting quite a bit of rain lately but it's been spotty.  I have noticed on weather radar that quite a bit has been hitting the brush country of Willacy and northern Hidalgo Counties so I made a run up to the Teniente Tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR in western Willacy county to check things out.  Turns out it is more lush up there than I have seen in recent years with lots of stuff blooming.  But the butterflies are still low in numbers.  That's not a big surprise as it takes a some time for numbers to recover after the extreme drought.  I saw only twenty species with none of the two big specialty butterflies, Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreak and Erichson's White-Skipper, though  their bladder mallow host plant was thriving.

Butterfly of the day was this Giant White.  These big tropical pierids can travel a long way on the southerly breezes.

The only Desert Checkered-Skippers I saw were several attracted to the minerals in the damp sand.  Here is one looking small next to a Laviana White-Skipper.

This is the first iNat record for Soldier for Willacy County.

The blooming Climbing Milkweed also attracted Queens.

But the major find of the day was a half dozen or so Mesoxaea texana feeding on the milkweeds.  There are only a few records on iNaturalist of the bumble bee sized member of the family Andrenidae.  I saw one last year a few miles to the west and did not know what it was.  But this time I recognized these cousins of the Glorious Protoxaea immediately.  What a cool bee!

I also wanted to check the tiger beetles at the muddy spot on the western end of La Sal Vieja.  The usual four species were present but not the rare one I was looking for.  A family of feral hogs crossing the salty playa looked like a scene out of Africa.

I will get back up there in a few weeks.

Guatemalan Cracker at NBC, 8/24/25

Yesterday Tom Forwood found a Gautemalan Cracker at the National Butterfly Center.  Tom is the new Superintendent at nearby Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park and is a fine naturalist.  I ran over and Alex told me where to look.  It took about a minute to find the Guatemalan Cracker in the row of Retama trees where it was feeding on sap.  The common name comes from the specific epithet guatemalena.  Many butterfly common names are Anglicizations of the the Latin name.

The Brown-banded Skipper was still hanging out by the old visitors center.

Long-tailed skippers are finally showing after a long absense.  Here's White-striped Longtail,  Long-tailed Skipper and Brown Longtail.

This Red-bordered Pixie was not doing a very good of hiding under this leaf.  Many of the brightly colored tropical metalmarks can be found hiding under leaves,

Finally a White Peacock after months without seeing one.

Mexican Fritillaries were out.

I guess this is just a Common Mellana.  It was down in the "ditch" in the shade, atypical of where I usually see it up in the flowers.  But nothing else in the Mexican guide seems to fit.

Last butterfly of the day was this fresh Mournful Duskywing.

The Valley has gotten some rain this past weeks and it's cooled off a tiny bit.  It feels like fall!

• Pipevine Swallowtail 3
• Giant Swallowtail 5
• Southern Dogface 1
• Large Orange Sulphur 15
• Lyside Sulphur 10
• Little Yellow 5
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 3
• Ceraunus Blue 8
• Fatal Metalmark 2
• Red-bordered Pixie 1
• American Snout 10
• Gulf Fritillary 8
• Mexican Fritillary 3
• Bordered Patch 10
• Phaon Crescent 20
• White Peacock 1
• Mexican Bluewing 8
• Guatemalan Cracker 1
• Tropical Leafwing 8
• Tawny Emperor 15
• Queen 8
• White-striped Longtail 1
• Long-tailed Skipper 1
• Brown Longtail 5
• Brown-banded Skipper 1
• White-patched Skipper 1
• Mournful Duskywing 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 6
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 20
• Laviana White-Skipper 6
• Clouded Skipper 6
• Southern Skipperling 1
• Whirlabout 2
• Southern Broken-Dash 2
• Common Mellana 2
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 6
• Eufala Skipper 5