I was going to get up early this morning and go birding somewhere but I didn't sleep well so I got up late. As I was putzing around on iNaturalist I got a WhatsApp message from Ryan Rodriguez that Luciano Guerra had just found a male Glaucous Cracker at the National Butterfly Center. This is a mega rarity and my only sightings have been in Mexico. So I raced over and found Ryan and Woody looking for the cracker. We put in a couple of hours and saw an uncommon Gray Cracker but could not find the Glaucous. Here's a link to Luciano's photos on Facebook.
Well they took off and I was on my own. As I walked by the maintenance shed I noticed a large butterfly on the bait log. As I approached it flew up onto a nearby hackberry and assumed the head down flattened cracker pose. I fired a couple of shots and thought this isn't Luciano's Glaucous Cracker but it doesn't look right for a Gray Cracker. There was just something different about the pattern of the wingtips. The light colored submarginal cells looked to big. And no red in the "s". Female Glaucous Cracker? I approacked and got an underwing shot. Sure enough the seventh cell had a white dot on the black area. Dang I had just found a second Glaucous Cracker!
Eventually it came down to the bait log and I got a better underwing shot. The standard field mark for Gouacous Cracker is the black area with a white spot on the seventh cell from the wing tip in the underwing. It's the spot just above the hindwing in this photo.
Earlier the Gray Cracker had been quite cooperative. Notice how the seventh cell from the wing tip on the underside of the forewing has a black area with no white spot.
It may seem unlikely to get two of the same mega rare butterflies on the same day but this can happen. Large butterflies can produce a lot of eggs and if conditions are right this can result in a lot of butterflies. A few years ago I found the second record for Variable Swallowtail for the United States. The next day Mike Rickard found the third. Mine was a female while his was a male. Anyway it's shaping up to be a good fall for butterflies.
