Banded Patch at Falcon State Park, 9/26/25

After my big tiger beetle discovery of last week, I did a little research and came across a couple more possible rare RGV tiger beetles; Cazier's and Eastern Red-bellied Tiger Beetles.  Both of these are found on limestone rocky outcrops which is not easy to find in the Valley.  So I thought, why not go up to Falcon and check the rocky area below the picnic area?  So I did just that and spent two hours wandering the rocky outcrops and finding a few butterflies but no tiger beetles.  Then I realzied I had made a geological error.  This is not limestone or our Valley equivalent caliche.  This is sandstone!  Woops.  In the tiger beetle world it's all about substrate.  But I did find this nice little Desert Checkered-Skipper.

There was a rather homely plant which I was not familiar with that was attracting butterflies.  Well I'm glad I didn't investigate too closely.  I discovered on iNaturalist that it's called "stinging serpent" and is very painful to the touch.  

This Huron Sachem has a mouth full of stinging serpent.

Not the result I had hoped for but it was interesting couple of hours.  So I moved onto the butterfly garden.  A Black Swallowtail was a bit out of the ordinary.

And then I found a rare Banded Patch.  Jeff Glassberg says it is one of our least seen resident butterflies.  I think this is the fifth time I have seen one.  And even better, it was ovipositing on Small-flowered Carlowrightii.

Pretty good day.

A New Tiger Beetle for iNaturalist, 9-21-25

A week ago I visited the Yturria Brush unit of the Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR west of La Joya and found It had received quite a bit of rain.  Though lush compared to recent years, not a lot of stuff was blooming.  It seems most of the plants were just trying to recover from the terrible drought we've had.  And consequently there were few butterflies.

I ran back over today hoping to see more flowers and to check to see if the Schaupp's Tiger Beetles were out.  I saw them about this same time last year.  Well I just barely made it about fifty yards north of the new parkig area and a couple of tiger beetles ran and flew in front of me.  Then one jumped on the other and vigorously copulated with it.  What the hell?

These were much larger than schauppii.  I managed to get a decent photo of one of them.

Well it's not the rare Cazier's Tiger Beetle.  That thing is glossy black with smaller spots.  The only big, flat black species with spots that I know of is Large Grassland Tiger Beetle.  But that occurs north of here.  I seem to vaguely remember a Valley subspecies of Cicindelidia obsoleta in the field guide.  But there were no records on iNaturalist for that one.  Glad I got some photos.

Not much more was blooming than last time and I saw very few butterflies.  But I did find my Schaupp's Tiger Beetles.

After a nice two mile walk I returned to the jeep and ate lunch.  A short check south of the parking area turned up a couple more of the mystery tiger beetles.

That was enough for the morning.  But I figured I should check the old entrance to see if they had trimmed.  It was pretty thorny last time I tried to walk the old trail.   Well they had trimmed and darmed if there wasn't more of the big black tiger beetles.  And I got some good photos.

Upon arriving home I checked the field guide and yes there is a subspecies of Large Grassland Tiger Beetle that occurs along the westen edge of the Valley.  The book says it was discovered in 1946 and has rarely been seen since from Maverick to Hidalgo Counties.  I sent the photos to Alex Harman who is the Entomology Chair at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.  He was happy to finally get photos of Rio Grande Grassland Tiger Beetle Cicindelidia obsoleta neojuvenilis for iNaturalist.  Here's a link to the iNat page.

Telea Hairstreak at Falcon, 9-16-25

I had not been to Falcon State Park in a few weeks so I thought I would run up and check the bird and bug situation.  The lake levels were still very low, about the same as my last visit.  There were just a few Least Sandpipers and Spotted Sandpipers and tiger beetles were just the regular Ocellated and S-banded.  Here's a Western Giant Swallowtail sucking out minerals from the mud.

So I checked out the butterfly garden.  The park staff has done a pretty good job of keeping a little water on the garden and they have had a bit of rain so the garden was actually looking good.  As has been the case, there wee not a lot of butterflies present.  But I did find a good one as I was watching bees in the blooming kidneywood.  A small hairstreak over my head, back lit agaist a bright sky, turned out to be a rare Telea Hairstreak.  This is the fifth I've ever seen and my first for Starr County.  And she seems to be oviposting.

Bee-wise there were a couple of good ones.  One clump of blooming kidneywood was hosting both of our Valley large Oxaeine Andrenid bee species.  This is the fourth time this summer I have found Mesoxaea texana.  Maybe it's not as rare as they say.

And there were at least a half dozen Protoxaea gloriosa,  It was a great opportunity to compare the two species.

It's shaping up to be a good fall butterfly season in the RGV.

National Butterfly Center, 9/14/25

Well....  My original plan was to go to the HEB supermarket yesterday for groceries and then watch football.  But it was a nice moring so I thought what the hell.  I'll just go to the butterfly park and watch football afterwards.  The decision had disasterous consequences.  Well sort of.

Things started out great with at least a dozen Western Giant Swallowtails in the Mexican Orchid by the nursery.

Then a nice Guava Skipper popped in.  Probably the same one I glimsped last weekend.

Male Red-bordered Metalmarks are vastly under rated.

A few grasskippers were out.  Here is Clouded, Eufala, Wirlabout, and Double-dotted Skippers.

A walk up to the front gardens produced a nice Lanatana Scrub-Hairstreak.

And the first Common Sootywing I've seen in a while.

I'm discovering long-horned bees are a pain to ID except for a few easy ones like the female Tepanec Long-horned Bee with the black blotch on the stripe on abdominal segment four.

A return to the Mexican Orchid tree brought on a flurry of good butterflies.  First it was a Yellow Angled-Sulphur that my camera refused to focus on.  It was only present a few seconds as it often the case.  So I had to settle for a nearby Giant White.

I studied the flock (Do butterflies flock?) of Western Giant Swallowtails searching for an Ornython Swallowtail.  I got one!  It seems most of the ones we get are missing a large chunk of wing.  They have been blown a long ways in the wind and had to fight off a few predators.

Within a couple of minutes all three good butterflies were gone.  I watched the Mexican Orchid a while longer but nothing else unusual showed up.  So I headed for home.  

When I arrived I noticed I had a text from birder, butterflyer, and odester extraordinaire Martin Reid.  A Double-striped Thick-knee had just been found east of San Antonio near Nixon.  Yikes!  It is only the second ever north of Mexico.  As the first was taken as a specimen from the King Ranch in 1961, we've been waiting a long time.  I've seen a number of them in Chiapas near Palenque.

Well it was 2pm and I was exhausted and covered in sweat and sunscreen.  I just wasn't up for the five hour drive to maybe see the bird.  As it turned out a lot of people got it and it was still present in a pasture under a tree as the sun set.  But thick-knees are nocturnal shorebirds so it was just chilling as the hundred or so birders ticked it for their lists.  During the night it would be out feeding and there's a good possibility it might be elsewhere come morning.  So I decided to wait to see if it was refound.

Had I just gone to HEB and then watched football, I might have chased the bird when the word got out.  As I type this the Double-striped Thick-knee has not be refound.  Birders are searching on the private ranch.  I've always got an eye open for these guys as I bird the grasslands of Willacy county.  I guess I will just have to find my own.

Here's today's list of 38 species of butterflies.

• Pipevine Swallowtail 1
• Giant Swallowtail 20
• Ornythion Swallowtail 1
• Giant White 1
• Yellow Angled-Sulphur 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 1
• Large Orange Sulphur 15
• Lyside Sulphur 2
• Little Yellow 2
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Cassius Blue 1
• Ceraunus Blue 8
• Red-bordered Metalmark 3
• American Snout 5
• Gulf Fritillary 1
• Bordered Patch 4
• Phaon Crescent 20
• White Peacock 1
• Mexican Bluewing 1
• Tropical Leafwing 3
• Queen 15
• Soldier 1
• Guava Skipper 2
• Brown Longtail 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 5
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 20
• Desert Checkered-Skipper 1
• Laviana White-Skipper 4
• Common Sootywing 1
• Clouded Skipper 8
• Double-dotted Skipper 3
• Southern Skipperling 1
• Fiery Skipper 1
• Whirlabout 3
• Southern Broken-Dash 1
• Common Mellana 1
• Eufala Skipper 6