CR 30 Teniente Tract LRGV NWR, 8/28/25

The Rio Grande Valley of south Texas has been getting quite a bit of rain lately but it's been spotty.  I have noticed on weather radar that quite a bit has been hitting the brush country of Willacy and northern Hidalgo Counties so I made a run up to the Teniente Tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR in western Willacy county to check things out.  Turns out it is more lush up there than I have seen in recent years with lots of stuff blooming.  But the butterflies are still low in numbers.  That's not a big surprise as it takes a some time for numbers to recover after the extreme drought.  I saw only twenty species with none of the two big specialty butterflies, Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreak and Erichson's White-Skipper, though  their bladder mallow host plant was thriving.

Butterfly of the day was this Giant White.  These big tropical pierids can travel a long way on the southerly breezes.

The only Desert Checkered-Skippers I saw were several attracted to the minerals in the damp sand.  Here is one looking small next to a Laviana White-Skipper.

This is the first iNat record for Soldier for Willacy County.

The blooming Climbing Milkweed also attracted Queens.

But the major find of the day was a half dozen or so Mesoxaea texana feeding on the milkweeds.  There are only a few records on iNaturalist of the bumble bee sized member of the family Andrenidae.  I saw one last year a few miles to the west and did not know what it was.  But this time I recognized these cousins of the Glorious Protoxaea immediately.  What a cool bee!

I also wanted to check the tiger beetles at the muddy spot on the western end of La Sal Vieja.  The usual four species were present but not the rare one I was looking for.  A family of feral hogs crossing the salty playa looked like a scene out of Africa.

I will get back up there in a few weeks.

Guatemalan Cracker at NBC, 8/24/25

Yesterday Tom Forwood found a Gautemalan Cracker at the National Butterfly Center.  Tom is the new Superintendent at nearby Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park and is a fine naturalist.  I ran over and Alex told me where to look.  It took about a minute to find the Guatemalan Cracker in the row of Retama trees where it was feeding on sap.  The common name comes from the specific epithet guatemalena.  Many butterfly common names are Anglicizations of the the Latin name.

The Brown-banded Skipper was still hanging out by the old visitors center.

Long-tailed skippers are finally showing after a long absense.  Here's White-striped Longtail,  Long-tailed Skipper and Brown Longtail.

This Red-bordered Pixie was not doing a very good of hiding under this leaf.  Many of the brightly colored tropical metalmarks can be found hiding under leaves,

Finally a White Peacock after months without seeing one.

Mexican Fritillaries were out.

I guess this is just a Common Mellana.  It was down in the "ditch" in the shade, atypical of where I usually see it up in the flowers.  But nothing else in the Mexican guide seems to fit.

Last butterfly of the day was this fresh Mournful Duskywing.

The Valley has gotten some rain this past weeks and it's cooled off a tiny bit.  It feels like fall!

• Pipevine Swallowtail 3
• Giant Swallowtail 5
• Southern Dogface 1
• Large Orange Sulphur 15
• Lyside Sulphur 10
• Little Yellow 5
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 3
• Ceraunus Blue 8
• Fatal Metalmark 2
• Red-bordered Pixie 1
• American Snout 10
• Gulf Fritillary 8
• Mexican Fritillary 3
• Bordered Patch 10
• Phaon Crescent 20
• White Peacock 1
• Mexican Bluewing 8
• Guatemalan Cracker 1
• Tropical Leafwing 8
• Tawny Emperor 15
• Queen 8
• White-striped Longtail 1
• Long-tailed Skipper 1
• Brown Longtail 5
• Brown-banded Skipper 1
• White-patched Skipper 1
• Mournful Duskywing 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 6
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 20
• Laviana White-Skipper 6
• Clouded Skipper 6
• Southern Skipperling 1
• Whirlabout 2
• Southern Broken-Dash 2
• Common Mellana 2
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 6
• Eufala Skipper 5

National Butterfly Center, 8/16/25

It's still hot and nasty in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas but there's a hint of fall in the air.  Maybe it's just the days getting a little shorter.  The Mid Valley got rained on hard by a weird little low pressure system that spun up in the Gulf so I ran over to the National Butterfly Center yesterday to see what was going on.  They got very little rain but there were still plenty of butterflies.  Star of the day was this stonking Brown-banded Skipper.  It was so strongly marked it had me scratching my head a bit.  It's been a couple of years since I have seen one.

There was a nice White-patched Skipper in the in front of the visitors center.

I like spread winged skippers.  But sometimes I get tired of of Sickle-winged Skippers when they are so common.  But lately they have been uncommon so this one was appreciated.

All of the tailed skippers were missing tails.  I think they have blown up from Mexico rather than hatched locally.  Here's Brown Longtail and White-striped Longtail.

This worn Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak looks particularly dull against the scarlet Jatropha.

Goatweed Leafwings are always a treat in the Valley.

Here is the more common Tropical Leafwing.

Elada Checkerspots are regular near the restrooms.

A spur of the moment visit racked up 41 species.  Nothing wrong with that.

• Pipevine Swallowtail 1
• Giant Swallowtail 7
• Southern Dogface 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 2
• Large Orange Sulphur 20
• Lyside Sulphur 10
• Little Yellow 6
• Gray Hairstreak 2
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 2
• Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Cassius Blue 3
• Ceraunus Blue 10
• American Snout 6
• Gulf Fritillary 10
• Mexican Fritillary 1
• Bordered Patch 6
• Elada Checkerspot 5
• Texan Crescent 1
• Phaon Crescent 25
• Mexican Bluewing 8
• Common Mestra 1
• Tropical Leafwing 6
• Goatweed Leafwing 1
• Tawny Emperor 8
• Queen 8
• White-striped Longtail 1
• Brown Longtail 6
• Sickle-winged Skipper 1
• Brown-banded Skipper 1
• White-patched Skipper 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 3
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 12
• Laviana White-Skipper 6
• Julia's Skipper 1
• Clouded Skipper 6
• Southern Skipperling 2
• Fiery Skipper 5
• Whirlabout 1
• Southern Broken-Dash 5
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 4
• Eufala Skipper 1

First Gray Cracker of the Fall at NBC, 8/9/25

Fall?  As a birder my fall season starts with the first returning migrants which usually starts about the first of July.  Then the first Orchard Orioles, Black-andwhite Warblers and Louisiana Waterthrushes start to trickle though.  Purple Martins are staging for migration.  And the first Mexican butterflies start to wander northward.

It's been nasty hot and dry lately.  "Hot and Nasty" as Black Oak Arkansas sang in the 70's.  But somebody, might have been Ryan, found a Gray Cracker at the National Butterfly Center yesterday.  When the alert with photo when out on the Discord app, I noticed the cracker had no red in the marginal "s" spot on the forewing.  After last year's invasion of Glaucous Crackers I brought this up.  The notion was quickly pooh-poohed by others.  I wasn't so sure so I made a trip over there yesterday to try to locate the butterfly.  It was easy to find on the sme bait log as the day before.  The "s" spot seems to have a very sight pinkish wash but more importantly the tell tale seventh submarginal cell on the under side of the fore wing lack the diagnotic white spot of a Glaucous so it's a Gray Cracker as reported.  And a really nice one at that.

Saw my first Soldiers for the fall.

This fat female Tropical Leafwing is missing a piece of wing.  They use crotons for a host plant.

Last year I noticed Blue Spiny Lizards for the first time at the National Butterfly Center.  This RGV specialty is partial to caliche outcrops but has adapted to concrete and brick structures.  There's a nice colony at the entrace to nearby Bentsen State Park.  Anyway they are making their selves at home at the NBC.  This one was on the rest room in the lower garden.

A Yellow Angled Sulphur was also reported yesterday so stuff is on the move.

• Giant Swallowtail 6
• Southern Dogface 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 5
• Large Orange Sulphur 20
• Lyside Sulphur 2
• Little Yellow 6
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Cassius Blue 1
• Ceraunus Blue 3
• American Snout 2
• Gulf Fritillary 12
• Bordered Patch 3
• Elada Checkerspot 3
• Phaon Crescent 12
• White Peacock 1
• Mexican Bluewing 1
• Gray Cracker 1
• Tropical Leafwing 4
• Tawny Emperor 6
• Queen 15
• Soldier 3
• Brown Longtail 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 1
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 10
• Laviana White-Skipper 3
• Clouded Skipper 3
• Southern Skipperling 2
• Fiery Skipper 1
• Southern Broken-Dash 1

TB Trip to AZ, Heading Home, Day 5 & 6, 7/25-26/24

After a night in Springerville, I was ready to come home.  In retrospect I should have spent a day in the area, but I had over 3k images to got though and my lifer fix was satiated.  So I headed east on US 60.  The shortgrass prairie was extremely dy.

A coyote wanted no part of my photography.  Lots of varmit hunters out here.

This is Ferruginous Hawk country.

In arid country, paved highways act as water collection devices.  So it can be very dry but there will be blooming flowers adjacent to the highway.  There were not a lot of butterflies this cool morning but I did get a good one.  Uncas Skipper is a high prairie species I really wanted to see and eventually I stumbled across one.  What a knockout!

iNat refuses to ID my Edwards's Skipperlings.  Apparently it is not common enough to be included in their AI program so I have to enter my own ID.

I found a tiger beetle.  I was hoping for oregona but I guess the rear maculation points to punctulata.  I don't have much experience finding these guys away from water.

Here's a Marine Blue.

There was no shortage of Tenebrionids or "stink" beetles as they are lovingly called.  eleodesthermopolis is good about identifying them for me on iNat.

I was toying with the idea of heading acros the Sacramento Mountains but they were getting clobbered by storms so I just went south along the Rio Grande.  Not much going on as the temperature climbed to 100.  I overnighted in Van Horn.  On the way home I decided to take a stab at Ghost Tiger Beetle in the Monahans Sandhills State Park.  This pale species is adapted to live in open sandy areas.  It occurs across much of the country but is always uncommon and local.

I spent a couple of hours wandering about the sandhills but came up tiger beetle-less.  They are not easy to find.  There were other fun things to see like this "hanging thief" robberfly feeding on a sand wasp.

I made one last stop along the Pecos River south of Monahans.  Draining the gypsum deserts of New Mexico, the Pecos Rive is very alkaline.  I was not surprised to find Cream-edged Tiger Beetles.  Oddly this last specis was the one the inspired my trip a couple of weeks ago.  I even found another green one!

The final score looks like eleven species of tiger beetles with six lifers and ten lifer species of butterflies.  Pretty dang good.  Now that I've taken ten days to get all my photo editing, iNating and bloggling done, I'm ready to go again!