Here in the Lower Rio Grande Valley we've recently had a lot of days with temperatures reaching the mid 80s and strong southerly winds resulting in what will prove to be the warmest December on record. Butterflies have been decent but not fantastic. Well that all changed today.
I was at the National Butterfly Center having a pretty good day. There was a Curve-winged Metalmark, a couple of Silver-banded Hairstreaks and a Mexican Silverspot. It was nearing 3pm when Honey texted me from the gym and said she was ready to go eat. So I was heading to the car when I distantly hear butterflier Lorna Graham calling my name. I yelled back and she yelled that they had a strange skipper. I ran over and wow! What a skipper! I had recently perused the skippers in Glassberg's Butterflies of Mexico that might possibly show up in the US someday. I recognized this strange spread wing skipper as one I had seen in the book. It was tawny brown with a dark brown band that crossed the hind wings and abdomen. However a projection our from the hind wing made me think of the spurwings. I told the few butterfly watchers assembled that I thought it was a first US record and maybe it was a spurwing. It certainly was not in the North American field guide. I also mentioned that there were some blue-skippers with a horizontal band like that but I was still thinking spurwing.
I put the word out on Facebook and on the birding What's App and soon recieved a response from Latin American butterfly expert Will Carter that it was a Tanned Blue-Skipper (Quadrus lugubris). And it was a first record for the United States. It ws my 215th species for the RGV.
After getting a bunch of photos I ran over to the gym in Mission, picked up Honey and we decided to try a nearby Mexican seafood restaurant. Well I was working on a big plate of seafood stew with fish, shimp and octopus when the phone dinged and Mike Rickard had just found a Pale Sicklewing. So we finished our meal and made the short drive over to the NBC and danged if I wasn't soon looking at my first Pale Sicklewing. There are very few US records and for me it was RGV butterfly #216.
After going two years without getting a local lifer butterfly, I get two in one day. And there's four more days of warm southerly winds to blow up butterflies from Mexico ahead of the next cold front. We may not be done yet. And here's the other butterflies from today.
- Orange Sulphur 3
- Large Orange Sulphur 1
- Lyside Sulphur 6
- Little Yellow 2
- Silver-banded Hairstreak 2
- Gray Hairstreak 1
- Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 6
- Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak 2
- Dusky-blue Groundstreak 2
- Western Pygmy-Blue 2
- Reakirt's Blue 2
- Fatal Metalmark 1
- Curve-winged Metalmark 1
- Gulf Fritillary 2
- Zebra Heliconian 8
- Texan Crescent 5
- Phaon Crescent 1
- Question Mark 1
- Red Admiral 6
- White Peacock 4
- Mexican Bluewing 6
- Carolina Satyr 3
- Monarch 3
- Queen 30
- Soldier 5
- White-striped Longtail 1
- Long-tailed Skipper 1
- Dorantes Longtail 3
- Brown Longtail 3
- White-patched Skipper 1
- Funereal Duskywing 1
- Tropical Checkered-Skipper 3
- Laviana White-Skipper 4
- Julia's Skipper 1
- Clouded Skipper 6
- Orange Skipperling 1
- Fiery Skipper 6
- Whirlabout 4
- Sachem 1
- Common Mellana 2
- Eufala Skipper 2
- Ocola Skipper 3
- Purple-washed Skipper 6
