Tiger Beetle Trip to Arizona, Day 2, 7/22/25,

The next morning I was back on the road and was disappointed to find southern New Mexico extremely dry.  No summer monsoon out here.  But there was evidence of recent rain as I crossed into Arizona and by noon I driving just south of Willcox to my first tiger beetle stop on a small flooded alkaline playa on Blue Sky Road.  I grabbed the camera and jumped out of the jeep and walked a few yards onto the small sandy alkaline playa and bang!  My lifer Cicindela nigrocoerulea, Black Sky Tiger Beetle.  This southwestern tiger beetle can vary in color from black to blue black to green.  But always has a dull luster.

Then just a few feet away Ellisoptera marutha, the Arid Plains Tiger Beetle.  These metallic green beauties were probably the most common species in the area.  Lots of them were doing the tiger beetle chacha.

And then a tiny one with white stripes.  My lifer White-striped Tiger Beetle!  (Well actually it wasn't.  More on that later.)

When I first arrived another vehicle was parked by the playa with three people on the other side of the road walking through the grassland, one sweeping an insect net through the grass.  After a while one of them walked over to me to talk.  Turned out he was a tiger beetle biologist from back east (I don't remember where) with a couple of his students and was here for ten days doing population studies.  He asked me what I had found but we couldn't communicate very well.  Being a rank amateur I tend to use common names and this guy only knew Latin binomials.  He was looking for debilis in the grass.  I sort of understood he was looking for the rare tiny Grass-runner Tiger Beetle.  After a bit we parted and he went back to his students and I returned to walking around the shallow lake.  A couple of spotted species were common.  This is the Western Red-bellied Tiger Beetle.  I saw a lot of them in the Chiricahuas last year.

And the ubiquitous Ocellated Tiger Beetle.

After a lunch break I started working the shallow wet ditch along the sandy road.  The hazy sky became a little brighter and good stuff started popping out.  I was happy to get good shots of the White-striped Tiger Beetle, Jundlandia lemniscata.   Most of the photos I see of this apecies are individulas that have been attracted at night by black lighting.

While I was shooting these little red tigers an even smaller red one ran into the open and it didn't hve stripes.  What the....?  Holy smokes!  Sonoran Tiger Beetle!  I had a couple of spots for Brasiella wickhami south of Tucson so this was going to save me some driving.

I worked the ditch a bit more and then back around the shallow lake.  A mixed pair of Black Sky Tiger Beetles got my attention.  Do the colors of the offspring stay true with one color being dominant?  Or are the offspring somewhere in between?

Love these green Arid Land Tiger Beetles.

Then I spotted another solid green one.  iNaturalist AI wants to call it another nigrocoerulea but it looks slimmer to me.  And I was right as iNat Tiger Beetle expert Alex_cicindela_guy just IDed it as a Punctured Tiger Beetle, Cicindela punctulata.  The ones in Texas are mostly black but SE Arizona has the green chihuahuae subspecies.  Punctured Tiger Beetle is probably the most common species in Texas north of San Antonio.

And one more nigrocoerulea.

That evening as I went through my photos at the motel, I started with the most recent and scrolled backwards.  Eventually I came to that first White-striped Tiger Beetle.  After seeing nearly a dozen during the day, I had to laugh.  This was actually the rare Grass-runner Tiger Beetle, Parvindela debilis, the same species the tiger beetle biologist was searching for.

Eight species of tiger beetles in one day easily broke my old record of five.  And I still haven't seen my primary prey, the Willcox Tiger Beetle.  Maybe tomorrow.