This afternoon I ran up to the Teniente Tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR to do a little scouting for the upcoming Texas Butterfly Festival. It's pretty dry up there with absolutely no crucita or lantana blooming. But they had enough rain so that the silver croton and some little yellow composite were common though getting a little dry. I did much better than expected getting all the specialties for the area. I found two Red-crescent Scrub Hairstreaks on CR30 and then ten more on CR20 without looking very hard.
Six Erichson's White-Skippers were an all time high for me.
Saw at least three of the recently split Twintip Buckeyes.
The other expected specialty for the area is Desert Checkered-Skipper. I saw 8 to 10 of them.
There were equal numbers of White Checkered-Skippers,
And even a Tropical Checkere-Skipper to complete the trifecta.
Turk's-Cap White-Skipper is another specialty of the area.
Earlier in the day I found the first Zebra Heliconian of the fall in our yard at Progreso Lakes.
The list of 32 species is by far the most I've ever seen up there. It's drying up quickly so I hope they can hold on for the Festival.
Pipevine Swallowtail 1
- Giant Swallowtail 2
- Southern Dogface 10
- Cloudless Sulphur 2
- Little Yellow 2
- Dainty Sulphur 5
- Gray Hairstreak 3
- Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreak 12
- Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 5
- Western Pygmy-Blue 50
- Ceraunus Blue 5
- Fatal Metalmark 1
- American Snout 8
- Gulf Fritillary 4
- Variegated Fritillary 1
- Phaon Crescent 5
- Common Buckeye 1
- Tropical Buckeye 1
- White Peacock 1
- Common Mestra 1
- Queen 8
- Dorantes Longtail 1
- Brown Longtail 1
- Sickle-winged Skipper 2
- White Checkered-Skipper 8
- Tropical Checkered-Skipper 1
- Desert Checkered-Skipper 8
- Erichson's White-Skipper 6
- Turk's-cap White-Skipper 2
- Julia's Skipper 2
- Whirlabout 2
- Celia's Roadside-Skipper 1
- Eufala Skipper 5
