More Clench's Greenstreaks at NBC, 5/5/26

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  It was a warm, windy humid morning so I ran over to the National Butterfly Center to look for spring strays from the south.  It didn't take long before I found another Clench's Greenstreak.  This time it was on Low Croton in the front garden.  I figured it was Woody's from two days ago but examination of wear marks prove it to be a second.

The recent hot dry weather has really knocked down the blooms.  I found only one Clytie Ministreak.

Lots of Large Orange Sulphurs around with a bewildering array of females.  No two are alike,

Copulating Reakirt's Blues.

In the south gardn I was happy to find a couple of Pale-banded Crescents.  I thought they were done for the season.

Only one Mexican Crescent today.

I thought I would check out the balloon vine trellis for Silver-banded Hairstreaks.  The vine was blooming nicely but the only hairstreak was this surprise Red-lined Scrub-Hairstreak.  Actually it's not a surprise because they also use balloon vine as a host plant.

I wandered aroud the south garden some more after lunch.  I checked the Mexican Orchid and nothing but Large Orange Sulphurs.  Then a cursory check of the nearby Fiddlewoods.  And another Clench's Greenstreak!  Three in three days.

Huron Sachem and Marine Blue pushed the Big Board up to 53 species for still early May.  Pretty good.

By 2 PM it was getting too hot for humans.

Clench's Greenstreak and a Ministreak Trifecta, 5/3/26

I spent the morning working on photos from Saturday's bird migration marathon at South Padre Island and I was just getting ready for lunch when the Dischord chimed.  Woody had just found a stonking Clench's Greenstreak at the National Butterfly Center.  I've seen a few of these but Woody's photos were better than any of mine so to hell with lunch for a while.  I wanted to see this beauty!

I entered the visitors center and Angelly told me Woody had it in the garden in the frostweed.  I ran out the back and was soon checking frostweed..... and I could not find it.  Just a few Reakirt's Blues and a Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak.  Sigh.  Well this happens.  Many times I've seen a butterfly for just a few seconds and then it's gone forever.  No harm in trying.  You can't win if you don't play.  And stuff like that.  

I headed for home to finish my lunch.  I had just passed the stop sign when I realized there was another patch of frostweed in the garden.  Duh.  I turned around, drove back and parked.  Kenneth Wilson was in the frostweed out front looking for the greenstreak.  I told him it was supposed to be in the sunken garden and that I had checked the frostweed on the west side but had forgotten about the frostweed on the east side.  We ran over and there was the green hairstreak nectaring on the frost weed.

Closeups showed it did indeed have the brown frons of a Clench's Greenstreak.  Tropical Greenstreak has a green frons.

The upper wing surface is bright blue but hard to see.

Pretty cool!  I went home to finish my lunch.  I was later working on bird photos again and the Dischord chimed again.  Woody had just found a Red-lined Scrub-Hairstreak.  Pretty good but we had a bunch of these this past winter.  Then I saw his beautiful photo.  The PM spot band was all wrong.  I checked Glassberg's book.  This was a Gray Ministreak!  The only one I had ever seen was years ago at The Old Hidalgo Pumphouse.  I raced back.

Peggy was there and showed me the fiddlewood bush but we couldn't find it.  She returned to her duties at the park's Spring Bird Big Sit.  I kept looking and eventually found it right where she had seen it.

Well that was nice.  Plenty of Clytie Ministreaks around for a second Ministrymon species.

Mission accomplished I decided to drive back to the south garden and check the Mexican orchid bush for swallowtails.  Only a few giants.  I wandered around and soon found the Big Sit crew.  They were up to 75 species of birds seen from their 50 feet diameter circle.  Pretty good.  

I went back to the Mexican orchid (It's actually a species of Bauhinia and not related to orchids) and saw just a bunch of Large Orange Sulphurs and a Western Giant Swallowtail.  I then checked the nearby fiddlewoods and saw a tiny hairstreak looking thing up high.  I shot a few phots before it escaped.  Dang!  That looks like another Gray Ministreak.  Then a voice in my head said "Check the eye color."  Damned if it didn't have green eyes.  This was a Vicroy's Ministreak and my third Ministrymon species for the day.  Not much of a shot but it will do.

It used to be thought that Gray Ministreak came in black eyed and green eyed forms.  Jeff Glassberg decribed the green eyed form as the Vicroy's Ministreak, naming it after his late wife.  It really looks different with a much rougher looking underwing surface and the PM band is not as bold.  Their host plants are also different.  Some refer to Vicroy's Ministreak as the Pebbly Ministreak.

Wow!   And this doesn't include Peggy's Tailed Cecropian.  This spring season is turning out to be special.

National Butterfly Center, 4/27/26

While I was on my west Texas trip, the Valley got some rain and things have really greened out.  But the spring bird migration has been really good so butterflies have taken a back seat.  Which is fine because I didn't feel like battling the mosquitos.  So Monday I finally got over to the National Butterfly Center and it was alive with flowers and butterflies.  Granted most of them were Lyside Sulphurs and Reakirt's Blues.

On the big board in the visitors center, I saw Ornythion Swallowtail had been reported among the healthy for April 63 species.  So that was my target as I headed for the Mexican Orchid bush in the south garden.  It didn't take long.  But getting a photo of this amorous male was close too impossible as he chased the female Western Giant Swallowtails.  This was the best I could do.

Western Giant Swallowtail.

Nearby I saw a Gray Hairstreak on a blooming fiddlewood.  But the color and luster seemed off so I fired at a shot at what I expected would be a Marius Hairstreak.  Wrong again!  It was a sharp really fresh Red-lined Scrub Hairstreak.  I've never seen one in spring.

Lots of Clytie Ministreaks out.

Good to see a couple of Curve-winged Metalmarks out.

All of the big whites were Great Southern White.

Marine Blue is uncommon in the RGV.

And then there were these.  We've gotten Mexican Crescent happy in the last year.  Are these Mexican Crescents?  Or are they female Vesta?  That spot in the middle of the pale jagged median band has me concerned.  But I just went on Butterflies of American and solved my problem.  These are both males.  Male Vesta is distinctly two toned black and orange.  These are two male Mexican Crescents.  I feel better now.  I think.

Distracting me from the butterflies were the bees.  Lots of species out today.  I saw a dozen or more species.  These two little cuckoo bees will give me something to study.  Triepeolus?  Epeolus?  I've never seen one with a red scutellum.  For reference the flower head of the Bidens is about 5-6mm wide.  (PS:  The first one is Epeolus interruptus.  Oddly there are scattered records across the country but the only three from Texas are in the Valley with none in Mexico.  This was the first for Hidalgo County.  I'm still working on the second.)

And a few Nomada cuckoo bees.  Cuckoo bees are kleptoparasites meaning they lay their eggs in the nest of another species know as the host species.  The larvae consume the host larvae.

I should be out playing today but I wanted to get caught up on some of this stuff.  Also going to be hot with bad air quality today.  Up river Laredo had hazardous air quality yesterday thanks to a thermal inversion.

Trans-Pecos, River Loop, 4/10/26

I woke up to a sunny cool morning and had to decide where to go.  I wanted something different and I thought I needed Painted Crescent so I decided on a loop through Marfa down through Shafter and back along the Rio Grande to Terlingua might be fun.  In restrospect I had forgotten I had already seen Painted Crescent in Arizona.  Oh well, it would still be a new Texas butterfly for me.

The drive to Marfa and south through the high grasslands proved uneventful.  It was still a little cool for the few flowers to produce anything.  It was starting to warm by the time I reached the old mining town of Shafter and the always fun Cibolo Creek crossing.  I pulled off before the stream crossing and was greeted by a soaring Zone-tailed hawk.  Bet there's a nest in the nearby cottonwoods.

Got my only Nysa Roadside-Skipper for the trip.

Marine Blues were by the stream but it was still a little early for odes to be out.

I bid adieu to the javelina and headed on down to Presidio.

It was nice to pass through Presidio on a pleasant cool morning.  This remote border town on the Rio Grande often boasts the daily high temperature the Nation.  There are a half dozen or so iNat records of Painted Crescent along the river.  I figured the nearby BJ Bishop Wetlands might be a good place to look.  At least I might see a few migrant birds.

The little set of  ponds for the city of Presidio's treated wastewater is an oasis in this part of the Chihuahuan Desert.  I didn't see much at the little butterfly garden at the entrance.  Driving along the ponds I saw a couple of impossible to photograph Orange Sulphurs.  I parked at the covered picnic table and walked to the south border of the pond.  Lincoln's and Swamp Sparrows called but there were few birds.

Then I spied a couple of blues flitting in the clover at the water's edge.  I fired a few shots.  These blues have tails!  Eastern Tailed-Blue!  This was not a butterfly I was expecting.  Later I found it would be a first Presido County record on iNat.  They are common in moist east Texas.

Well that was cool.  As I returned to the picnic table and sat down to eat lunch, a small pale butterfly sailed past me.  The shallow dainty wing beats made it look like a Nymphalid.  Small pale Nymphalid?  I chased after it and managed a few shots.  My recent experiences with Mexican Crescent in the RGV made this one easy to ID.  It was like a Mexican Crescent with pale submarginal spots on the fore wing.  I had found my Painted Crescent.

After lunch I walked the south border of the pond and found my only Western Pygmy Blue for the trip.

And then a surprise grass skipper.  The default small orange skipper out here is Orange Skipperling.  But this one has a wite band on the under hind wing.  It's our old friend the Southern Skipperling.  Only the third Presidio County record on iNaturalist.  There are no records for next door Brewster County.

 

I saw several more Painted Crescents.  They seem variable like our Mexican and Phaon Crescents.

This dead Poorwill was a sad find.  Hope it wasn't the result of a local jackass with a gun but I bet it was.

With Painted Crescent in the bag, I thought why not go up to Ojito Adrentro in Big Bend Ranch State park.  I've not heard of any ode reports from there in years.  The beautiful isolated riparian canyon used to hold a population of Mayan Setwings.  After all the dry years I don't know if there's even any water up there.  My only visit was fifteen years ago so what the heck.

It's a long bumpy ride though the dusty desert to the trail head.  It was just as I remembered it though maybe with a few more dead cottonwoods.

The half mile hike through the desert was easy but the portion through the cottonwoods was rough.  Trees had fallen and the trail had been poorly maintained.  I did manage to find my only Erichson's White-Skipper for the trip.

And a Texan Crescent.

I scrambled around fallen dead trees and boulders hoping to find some water.  It looked grim.  But a Springwater Dancer gave me hope there was some water somewhere.

Then I found a few pools guarded by Flame Skimmers.

Here's a fun photogenic net-winged beetle.  iNat calls it the Bloody Net-winged Beetle.  Mike Quinn concurred.

The end of the box canyon was lush and had a nice pool.  No sign of the Mayan Setwings.  It may be early in the year for them. 

Lots of Lavender Dancers.

Well the Ojito Aldentro side trip took a lot longer than I had planned.  Also the rugged hike about wore me out and by the time I had driven the long dirt road back out to US 90, I was running out of time.  I would have like to have spent some time along the river, but I barely had time to race though the beautiful scenery to get to a restaurant in Study Butte for dinner.  I was exhausted by the time I got back to Alpine.

The next day I drove an uneventful 530 miles back to Mission.  I picked up a few sparrows but clouds kept the butterflies away.  Not a bad trip.  I'd give it a B.