I spent the morning working on photos from Saturday's bird migration marathon at South Padre Island and I was just getting ready for lunch when the Dischord chimed. Woody had just found a stonking Clench's Greenstreak at the National Butterfly Center. I've seen a few of these but Woody's photos were better than any of mine so to hell with lunch for a while. I wanted to see this beauty!
I entered the visitors center and Angelly told me Woody had it in the garden in the frostweed. I ran out the back and was soon checking frostweed..... and I could not find it. Just a few Reakirt's Blues and a Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak. Sigh. Well this happens. Many times I've seen a butterfly for just a few seconds and then it's gone forever. No harm in trying. You can't win if you don't play. And stuff like that.
I headed for home to finish my lunch. I had just passed the stop sign when I realized there was another patch of frostweed in the garden. Duh. I turned around, drove back and parked. Kenneth Wilson was in the frostweed out front looking for the greenstreak. I told him it was supposed to be in the sunken garden and that I had checked the frostweed on the west side but had forgotten about the frostweed on the east side. We ran over and there was the green hairstreak nectaring on the frost weed.
Closeups showed it did indeed have the brown frons of a Clench's Greenstreak. Tropical Greenstreak has a green frons.
The upper wing surface is bright blue but hard to see.
Pretty cool! I went home to finish my lunch. I was later working on bird photos again and the Dischord chimed again. Woody had just found a Red-lined Scrub-Hairstreak. Pretty good but we had a bunch of these this past winter. Then I saw his beautiful photo. The PM spot band was all wrong. I checked Glassberg's book. This was a Gray Ministreak! The only one I had ever seen was years ago at The Old Hidalgo Pumphouse. I raced back.
Peggy was there and showed me the fiddlewood bush but we couldn't find it. She returned to her duties at the park's Spring Bird Big Sit. I kept looking and eventually found it right where she had seen it.
Well that was nice. Plenty of Clytie Ministreaks around for a second Ministrymon species.
Mission accomplished I decided to drive back to the south garden and check the Mexican orchid bush for swallowtails. Only a few giants. I wandered around and soon found the Big Sit crew. They were up to 75 species of birds seen from their 50 feet diameter circle. Pretty good.
I went back to the Mexican orchid (It's actually a species of Bauhinia and not related to orchids) and saw just a bunch of Large Orange Sulphurs and a Western Giant Swallowtail. I then checked the nearby fiddlewoods and saw a tiny hairstreak looking thing up high. I shot a few phots before it escaped. Dang! That looks like another Gray Ministreak. Then a voice in my head said "Check the eye color." Damned if it didn't have green eyes. This was a Vicroy's Ministrak and my third Ministrymon species for the day. Not much of a shot but it will do.
It used to be though that Gray Ministreak came in black eyed and green eyed forms. Jeff Glassberg decribed the green eyed form as the Vicroy's Ministreak, naming it after his late wife. It really looks different with a much rougher looking underwing surface and the PM band is not as bold. Their host plants are also different. Some refer to Vicroy's Ministreak as the Pebbly Ministreak.
Wow! And this doesn't include Peggy's Tailed Cecropian. This spring season is turning out to be special.
