Yesterday after I got home from a day of cleaning our new house, I found I had missed an alert that the first US record of Perching Saliana
Saliana esperi had been found by Susan Keefer at Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco during the Friday butterfly walk. It was only seen for a few minutes but was photographed well. Anyway, I saw no reason that it should leave and thought with lots of searchers this morning there was a good chance the bug would be refound. I was right. Here's some shots of the Perching Saliana from this morning.
As the morning warmed the butterfly became more active and sought out Jan Dauphin's hat as a perch, giving us a good open winged shot. The dorsal pattern is an important feature when sorting through the other similar members of the genus Saliana. This is the first occurrence of any member of this genus north of the Mexican border.
I thought the name "Perching Saliana" sounded familiar and, sure enough, I had photographed one at Gamboa, Panama a few years ago.
