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.
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
