National Butterfly Center, 1/29/17

Been busy birding and working at our new house so I haven't done much butterfly stuff lately.  But after a morning of birding I decided to make a run over to the National Butterfly Center to see if anything interesting was around after the recent cold spell.  I was talking with Mike Rickard near the bird feeding station in the south garden when a gorgeous Mexican Silverspot suddenly materialized out of thin air and then disappeared just as quickly.  Pretty classy bug for lowly Dicliptera.

And then an emperor species was reported up by the Mexican olives but it turned out to be a nice Band-celled Sister.  I later found a second in the bird feeding station.

The bug of the day was Mike's Orange-crescent Groundstreak that he had found just minutes before I arrived.  Would like to have seen that one!  Otherwise it was pretty buggy for late January but I found nothing else worth mentioning.

National Butterfly Center, 1/5/17

Temperature was forecast to hit 80 today followed by 40s tomorrow so I figured it would be a good day to check out the National Butterfly Center.  Definitely the bug of the day was this Pearly-gray Hairstreak.  I've seen three before but this was the first I've ever found and recognized on my own.  It was smaller than the ones I've seen before but still the same bright blue above.

There are still plenty of great uncommon butterflies around despite our earlier cold weather.  Can say "no" to Malachites.

A ragged Florida White was popular with the visiting butterfliers from up north.

As were the two Curve-winged Metalmarks.

And the Julia Heliconians.

But I enjoy the common up north bugs that we don't see all the time like American Lady and Questionmark.

This Common Buckeye has a lot of orange on it like a Mangrove Buckeye.

56 species on the 5th of January aint bad!

• Pipevine Swallowtail 1
• Black Swallowtail 1
• Florida White 1
• Checkered White 3
• Great Southern White 2
• Southern Dogface 4
• Large Orange Sulphur 8
• Lyside Sulphur 8
• Little Yellow 15
• Mimosa Yellow 1
• Dainty Sulphur 1
• Gray Hairstreak 6
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 10
• Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak 2
• Pearly-gray Hairstreak 1
• Cassius Blue 5
• Cyna Blue 1
• Ceraunus Blue 1
• Reakirt's Blue 10
• Red-bordered Pixie 7
• Curve-winged Metalmark 2
• Falcate Metalmark 5
• American Snout 50
• Gulf Fritillary 5
• Julia Heliconian 3
• Zebra Heliconian 6
• Mexican Fritillary 8
• Crimson Patch 3
• Pale-banded Crescent 1
• Phaon Crescent 10
• Question Mark 1
• American Lady 1
• Red Admiral 12
• Common Buckeye 6
• White Peacock 10
• Banded Peacock 1
• Malachite 1
• Common Mestra 5
• Tropical Leafwing 2
• Tawny Emperor 5
• Monarch 2
• Queen 50
• Soldier 1
• Dorantes Longtail 1
• Brown Longtail 6
• Sickle-winged Skipper 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 10
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 3
• Laviana White-Skipper 12
• Julia's Skipper 2
• Fawn-spotted Skipper 2
• Clouded Skipper 30
• Southern Skipperling 8
• Fiery Skipper 20
• Whirlabout 1
• Eufala Skipper 6