Rio Grande Valley Butterflies

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Turquoise Longtail at NBC, 11/29/25

Friday morning sharp eyed Ryan Rodriguez got a brief look at a rare Turquoise Longtail in the Mexican orchid by the nursery. Thoughout the day hopeful butterfly watchers kept a vigil and eventually the Urbanus made another appearance. Several people got diagnostic photos but I arrived too late. I was taking a day off ahead of the warm windy Saturday that was forecast ahead of a incoming cold front. It cost me a lifer.

So my plan was to spend Saturday looking for good stuff blown in on the southerly wind. But before I could leave, the Discord sounded. The Turquoise Longtail was back! I raced over and got lucky this time.

This proved to be a fantastic day of very uncommon butterflies. In the immediate area of the orchid tree Curve-winged Metalmark, Caballo (formerly Poterillo) Skipper and Giant and Great Southern Whites were reported. Here's the metalmark.

Red-bordered pixies continue in large numbers.

Checking the nearby Coma tree, I spied a Marine Blue which put the NBC November list at an all time high of 139.

Then I decided to break from the crowd and run the bait logs. Not much exciting. So I decided to walk the ditch and found what I had hoped for... Malicious Skipper! Well, I guess it's not called that anymore. Synapte malitiosa as been split with the Caribbean nominate race retaining the old common moniker. Ours is the Northern Faceted Skipper, Synapte pecta. It's only the third I've ever seen, all self found. I put it out on the alert but no one else was able to refind it.

Farther north on the bait logs I foud a couple of female Pavon Emperor's.

And then in the sunken garden Ken Wilson found me a male.

Good to see a couple of Fawn-spotted Skippers. They were wiped out in the 2021 freeze.

Back to the south a Mazan's Scallopwing was reported in the little Gregg's Mistflower patch where the Red-spotted Patch was found a few days earlier.

Perusing the mistflowers I dug out an uncommon Erichson's White-skipper.

Back at the orchid tree, another Ruby-spotted Swallowtail put on a show.

Someone put a rare Spot-celled Sister on the Discord alert. Was it misidentified? All I found was a less rare female Silver Empror.

An uncommon Glazed Pellicia was on the blue Duranta.

A little later there was another report of a Spot-celled Sister. I ran over expecting to see the female Silver Emperor but no, it was a beautiful Spot-celled Sister. These used to be mega rare but we've had several this fall.