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!
