A couple of days ago I ran over to the National Butterfly Center to see what was on the wing. As I signed in Luciano told me Dennis Vollmar from Florida was in the park looking for some of the good butterflies that had been seen recently. I know Dennis from the magical afternoon of the Tanned Blue-Skipper from a few years ago. Luciano informed me that Dennis had been there a couple of days and had failed to find either the Tailed Ceropian or the Glaucous Cracker.
I soon found Dennis on the trails and we did a round of the bait stations. He told me he had seen a couple of Gray Crackers but nothing that looked like a Glaucous. We didn't find anything of note and wound up back at the little loop north of the bird feeding station where there were several Mexican Bluewings. I suggested we go to the Mexican Orchid patch to look for Onythion Swallowtails and as we headed over there I caught a flicker of movement on a tepeguaje. I looked through the camera and sure enough it was a cracker. And it didn't seen to have any red on the costal "s". After a couple of minutes we got the tell tale underwing shot and yup, there was the magic white spot on black back ground on the seventh submarginal forewing cell. Dennis had his lifer Glaucous Cracker!
We made another round for the Tailed Cecropian that had been present for ten days but it seemed to be gone. Dennis left for Oleander Acres to look for stuff and I did one more round of the bait stations and found a beautiful Gray Cracker showing red on the "s" and making the ID easy.
So how many Glaucous Crakcers have been seen this September at The National Butterfly Center? The question spurred me to go back and look at my photos. I decided to key in on the right fore wing costal "s" on head down (usual pose) positioned photos of the three individuals I had seen, 9/12, 9/21 and 9/24.
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So the three Glaucous Crackers I have photographed are three different individuals. Then there was the initial male that Luciano found. So at least four have found their way to the NBC. There are other photos out there so maybe we can come up with a definite count some time. In the past two weeks we may have already exceeded the total number of US Glaucous Cracker records.
