Sal del Rey, 11/7/15

This week I've led two birding trips up to Sal del Rey off of Brushline Road north of TX 186.  We walked in to the salt lake along a road used by water trucks that transport brine pumped from the lake to be used in the gas well fracking.  Along the way we had some pretty good butterflies.  This was my first East Mexican White-Skipper for this year.

We actually saw all four of the south Texas white-skippers.  Here's Erichson's.

And here's Turk's-cap White-Skipper and the more common Laviana White-Skipper.

A few weeks earlier I had walked this road and had seen lots of globemallow which had been absent during our prolonged drought.  Globemallow is the host plant for Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreak and they were out today.

I would like to have spent more time with the butterflies but this was a birding trip.  I'll have to get back up here in a few days.