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

National Butterfly Center, 8/16/25

It's still hot and nasty in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas but there's a hint of fall in the air.  Maybe it's just the days getting a little shorter.  The Mid Valley got rained on hard by a weird little low pressure system that spun up in the Gulf so I ran over to the National Butterfly Center yesterday to see what was going on.  They got very little rain but there were still plenty of butterflies.  Star of the day was this stonking Brown-banded Skipper.  It was so strongly marked it had me scratching my head a bit.  It's been a couple of years since I have seen one.

There was a nice White-patched Skipper in the in front of the visitors center.

I like spread winged skippers.  But sometimes I get tired of of Sickle-winged Skippers when they are so common.  But lately they have been uncommon so this one was appreciated.

All of the tailed skippers were missing tails.  I think they have blown up from Mexico rather than hatched locally.  Here's Brown Longtail and White-striped Longtail.

This worn Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak looks particularly dull against the scarlet Jatropha.

Goatweed Leafwings are always a treat in the Valley.

Here is the more common Tropical Leafwing.

Elada Checkerspots are regular near the restrooms.

A spur of the moment visit racked up 41 species.  Nothing wrong with that.

• Pipevine Swallowtail 1
• Giant Swallowtail 7
• Southern Dogface 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 2
• Large Orange Sulphur 20
• Lyside Sulphur 10
• Little Yellow 6
• Gray Hairstreak 2
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 2
• Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Cassius Blue 3
• Ceraunus Blue 10
• American Snout 6
• Gulf Fritillary 10
• Mexican Fritillary 1
• Bordered Patch 6
• Elada Checkerspot 5
• Texan Crescent 1
• Phaon Crescent 25
• Mexican Bluewing 8
• Common Mestra 1
• Tropical Leafwing 6
• Goatweed Leafwing 1
• Tawny Emperor 8
• Queen 8
• White-striped Longtail 1
• Brown Longtail 6
• Sickle-winged Skipper 1
• Brown-banded Skipper 1
• White-patched Skipper 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 3
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 12
• Laviana White-Skipper 6
• Julia's Skipper 1
• Clouded Skipper 6
• Southern Skipperling 2
• Fiery Skipper 5
• Whirlabout 1
• Southern Broken-Dash 5
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 4
• Eufala Skipper 1

First Gray Cracker of the Fall at NBC, 8/9/25

Fall?  As a birder my fall season starts with the first returning migrants which usually starts about the first of July.  Then the first Orchard Orioles, Black-andwhite Warblers and Louisiana Waterthrushes start to trickle though.  Purple Martins are staging for migration.  And the first Mexican butterflies start to wander northward.

It's been nasty hot and dry lately.  "Hot and Nasty" as Black Oak Arkansas sang in the 70's.  But somebody, might have been Ryan, found a Gray Cracker at the National Butterfly Center yesterday.  When the alert with photo when out on the Discord app, I noticed the cracker had no red in the marginal "s" spot on the forewing.  After last year's invasion of Glaucous Crackers I brought this up.  The notion was quickly pooh-poohed by others.  I wasn't so sure so I made a trip over there yesterday to try to locate the butterfly.  It was easy to find on the sme bait log as the day before.  The "s" spot seems to have a very sight pinkish wash but more importantly the tell tale seventh submarginal cell on the under side of the fore wing lack the diagnotic white spot of a Glaucous so it's a Gray Cracker as reported.  And a really nice one at that.

Saw my first Soldiers for the fall.

This fat female Tropical Leafwing is missing a piece of wing.  They use crotons for a host plant.

Last year I noticed Blue Spiny Lizards for the first time at the National Butterfly Center.  This RGV specialty is partial to caliche outcrops but has adapted to concrete and brick structures.  There's a nice colony at the entrace to nearby Bentsen State Park.  Anyway they are making their selves at home at the NBC.  This one was on the rest room in the lower garden.

A Yellow Angled Sulphur was also reported yesterday so stuff is on the move.

• Giant Swallowtail 6
• Southern Dogface 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 5
• Large Orange Sulphur 20
• Lyside Sulphur 2
• Little Yellow 6
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Cassius Blue 1
• Ceraunus Blue 3
• American Snout 2
• Gulf Fritillary 12
• Bordered Patch 3
• Elada Checkerspot 3
• Phaon Crescent 12
• White Peacock 1
• Mexican Bluewing 1
• Gray Cracker 1
• Tropical Leafwing 4
• Tawny Emperor 6
• Queen 15
• Soldier 3
• Brown Longtail 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 1
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 10
• Laviana White-Skipper 3
• Clouded Skipper 3
• Southern Skipperling 2
• Fiery Skipper 1
• Southern Broken-Dash 1

TB Trip to AZ, Heading Home, Day 5 & 6, 7/25-26/24

After a night in Springerville, I was ready to come home.  In retrospect I should have spent a day in the area, but I had over 3k images to got though and my lifer fix was satiated.  So I headed east on US 60.  The shortgrass prairie was extremely dy.

A coyote wanted no part of my photography.  Lots of varmit hunters out here.

This is Ferruginous Hawk country.

In arid country, paved highways act as water collection devices.  So it can be very dry but there will be blooming flowers adjacent to the highway.  There were not a lot of butterflies this cool morning but I did get a good one.  Uncas Skipper is a high prairie species I really wanted to see and eventually I stumbled across one.  What a knockout!

iNat refuses to ID my Edwards's Skipperlings.  Apparently it is not common enough to be included in their AI program so I have to enter my own ID.

I found a tiger beetle.  I was hoping for oregona but I guess the rear maculation points to punctulata.  I don't have much experience finding these guys away from water.

Here's a Marine Blue.

There was no shortage of Tenebrionids or "stink" beetles as they are lovingly called.  eleodesthermopolis is good about identifying them for me on iNat.

I was toying with the idea of heading acros the Sacramento Mountains but they were getting clobbered by storms so I just went south along the Rio Grande.  Not much going on as the temperature climbed to 100.  I overnighted in Van Horn.  On the way home I decided to take a stab at Ghost Tiger Beetle in the Monahans Sandhills State Park.  This pale species is adapted to live in open sandy areas.  It occurs across much of the country but is always uncommon and local.

I spent a couple of hours wandering about the sandhills but came up tiger beetle-less.  They are not easy to find.  There were other fun things to see like this "hanging thief" robberfly feeding on a sand wasp.

I made one last stop along the Pecos River south of Monahans.  Draining the gypsum deserts of New Mexico, the Pecos Rive is very alkaline.  I was not surprised to find Cream-edged Tiger Beetles.  Oddly this last specis was the one the inspired my trip a couple of weeks ago.  I even found another green one!

The final score looks like eleven species of tiger beetles with six lifers and ten lifer species of butterflies.  Pretty dang good.  Now that I've taken ten days to get all my photo editing, iNating and bloggling done, I'm ready to go again!

TB Trip to AZ, Day 4, White Mountains Butterflies, 7/24/25

After a couple of days of chasing little bugs though the mud, I decided I had enough.  Nine species of tiger beetles with six lifers in the Willcox Playa was about as good as I could have hoped for.  There were at least five more rare possibilities but I am not that dedicated.  So what to do?  With the dry spring and summer not a lot of butterflies were being reported in SE Arizona.  So how about a run up through the White Mountains north of Morenci?  I was going to do that last summer after visiting Mount Graham but it was so rainy I backed out.  So I took off to the north on US 191, formerly known as US 666.

The White Mountains are home to some pretty good Arizona birds like Clark's Nutcrackers and Three-toed Woodpeckers and I made a few trips up there over thirty years ago.  I drove up through the mining towns of Cliffton and Morenci.  Looks like the copper mine has eaten a few moutains since my last time up there.  I had forgotten how large it is.  Makes the Bisbee mine look like a litte hole.

Beyond the mine US 191 snakes up into the White Mountains.  It was very dry up there but occasional flowers were loaded with butterflies.  My first stop at the Cherry Lodge picnic are yielded my first butterflies of the day.  I didn't realize how sexually dimorphic the Two-tailed Swallowtail was.  What a magnificent creature!  Here's a male and female.

There were also several of the "Siva" subspecies of Juniper Hairstreak.

The next thirty miles took me through some extremely dry pinyon-juniper habitat without a single flower.  Eventually as the road started to climb I started to see some flowers, mostly a weedy clover like thing.  Quite a few Nais Metalmarks.

Just a few yards down the road I saw a car parked with several young guys with insect nets.  I stopped and asked what they were finding.  Turned out they were from Georgia and it was their first time in the area.  One spastic semiautistic guy spit out some Latin names and it sounded like about the same as what I had been seeing.  They quickly left.  Don't know if they recognized me as a non-netter with my camera or they were in a hurry to get to the next spot.  The spot they let was filled with flowers though tampled a bit by their netting activities.  I don't hate netters but i don't like them.  I understand collecting specimens for research.  But grabbing a bunch of bugs and going home to ID them later seems a bit shallow.  Anyway lots of pollinators came out to welcome my peaceful activity.  Here's the expected Taxiles skipper.

And Pacuvious duskywing.

And then a lifer, Edward's skipperling.  First Greenlee County record on iNat.

Bronze Roadside-Skipper with a little orange.

And Cassus roadside-Skipper with a lot of orange.

And then another lifer, Large Roadside-Skipper.  They are a little larger than other Amblycerta but not a lot.  The pattern of the dots are diagnostic.

Dun skipper ws a surprise.  First Greenlee County record on iNat.

And I got a lifer bee.  Best I can figure this is the Montane Digger Bee, Anthophora montana.

A very striking diurnal moth that I haven't IDed yet.  It's some kind of a Forester moth.

At about mile 218 I found a patch of Fendler's Coenothus that was loaded with butterflies.  I took some pictures of the colorful Juniper Hairstreaks.  After getting home and entering one of the photos into iNaturalist I got a surprise.  Callophrys affinis ssp. apama?  What the hell is that?  A little searching turned up a small sub-photo for Bramble Hairstreak in Glassberg.  Kaufman has also has it and calls it the "Canyon" subspecies of Bramble Hairstreak.  Apparently the southwestern subspecies of Bramble Hairsteak was split off.  Now it's called the Western Green Hairstreak.  Oh and then I noticed that it lacks the typical "hair" of a hairstreak.  Woops, I got a lifer despite myself.

Here's the "siva" Juniper Hairstreak.

And then a Thicket Hairstreak.

Lots of Nais Metalsmarks.

Another Large Roadside-skipper.

And then a bit down the road I found another small bunch of flowers.  I got out of the jeep and spied a blooming pea with some small rusty butterflies with bright white spots.  Wow!  Four-spotted Skippering was a species I had been hoping to find.

A crescent like thing landed in front of me and I fired a couple of shots.  My lifer Arachne Checkerspot!

A hummer working the flowers was a male Broad-tailed Hummingbird.

A turnoff by Hannagan Meadows gave me a lone dark satyr.  What the heck is that?  Well checking Glassberg I found it was a Small Wood-Nymph.  Gee I should study the field guide once in a while.  Another lifer!

Downd the road a ways I saw a ptch of flowers with butterflies.  On iNat I found the flowers to be bluebells.

 Ant there was a female Taxiles Skipper.

And then a big black and white one.  Only my second ever Weidemeyer's Admiral.

My only Monarch of the trip.

And then a big bright fritillary.  iNat's first choice is Northwestern Fritillary which ws split from Atlantis Fritillarty.  This would be the White Mountains subspecies.  We will see what the iNat people think.

And then a copper.  Well I had not expected any coppers because I did no research for this part of the trip.  Turns out to be the localized "Ferris" subpecies of Ruddy Copper.  I don't deserve all these lifers.

And finally a Comma.  I just assumed it was the Satyr Comma I have seen in the Chiricahuas.  But the AI of iNaturalist calls it a Hoary Comma.  It is lacking a spot present onSatyr Comma.  Another potential lifer!  

Then a ways down the road as I followed Hannagan Creek I saw a few more flowers and made one last stop in the late afternoon.  More Ferris Coppers and Four-spotted Skipperlings.

Well an unplanned drive through the White Mountains down old US 666 turned into one heck of a butterfly day with what looks to be nine lifers.