The Rio Grande Valley of south Texas has become hot and dry as it often does in the summertime. An unproductive trip to the Teniente tract in Willacy County turned up few butterflies in the dry brush country but a stop at the CR 30 crossing on the west end of La Sal Vieja turned up this beautiful green Eunota circumpicta, Cream-edged Tiger Beetle. Most are brown but tiger beetles have some weird genetic phenotypic variability. I think it's a way for a taxon to deal with environmental changes. This one seems to have lost its antennae. The third photo is a normal brown one with antennae intact.
This find along with the general paucity of butterflies got me to checking iNaturalist where I discovered lots of tiger beetles had been recentedly sighted on the alkaline Willcox Playa of southeastern Arizona, including several that would be new to me. It was also a chance to get out of the south Texas humitity. So I packed the jeep and took off.
Day one would be a 680 mile slog with few stops to Van Horn where I would overnight. West Texas has recently received lots of rain after several years of drought and a flooded low area with muddy shoreline beckoned a late afternoon stop just past the Kent exit on Interstate 10. I pulled of the highway and scrambled down the bank. Sure enough there was the common Ocellated Tiger Beetle. I see lots of these in the Valley. They live lives of killing and copulating. That's the tiger beetle mantra.
Then there was one with different markings. This Thin-lined Tiger Beetle, Cicindelidia tenuisignata is a first for Culberson County on iNat. I saw then last fall in new Mexico along the Pecos River.
The find of the day of the day was this cool Texas Banded Gecko at exit 188. I have only seen a few through the years.
Tomorrow I go the the Willcox Playa area for a tiger beetle palooza.
