Rare RGV Tiger Beetles, Oct 2-11, 2026

August and September were excruciatingly hot in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas.  Daily highs in the western part of the Valley were 100-110 F.  And on top of that very little rain with some spots receiving no rain.  So the wonderful butterfly diversity of early summer dwindled to just a few hardy individuals.  At the National Butterfly Center they always do a good job of keeps plants alive and some of them blooming, but butterflies still dropped to a small fraction of their earlier numbers.  

Meanwhile out west the Yturria Brush and La Puerta tracts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR were dry, crispy and close to lifeless.   So I have been spending my days entering a lot of old records into iNaturalist.  It's frustrating to find how poorly I labled photos ten to twenty years ago.  Often just a county or maybe a road.  Many good records were close to useless for iNat due to lack of specific location.  But I learned my lesson and now label locations much better.

Finally on Oct 1, heavy rain hit parts of the Valley due to moisture from eastern Pacific hurricane Polo meeting Gulf moisture and a front form the north.  According to radar estimates Yturria Brush got four inches while La Puerta got hammered with eight inches.  I figured it would take a while for butterflies to respond, but tiger beetles and other bugs and maybe some herps might be excited to tunnel up though the now softer soil to explore and look for mates.  

So on Oct 2, I headed over to Yturria Brush just west of La Joya in Hidalgo County hoping to find Rio Grande Grassland Tiger Beetle.  September last year I photographed the first iNaturalist record for this critically imperiled neojevenilis subspecies of Cicendelidia obsoleta.  Pearson's Field Guide to Tiger Beetles states there are few records since the origial specimens were collected in 1946.  But it may just be a case of few people looking as most of the range in on private land.

It didn't take but maybe five minutes till I found my first neojuvenilis.  And just like last year, the first guy I found jumped a female and they were going at it.  But this time I got better photos.  I doubt anyone else has ever documented neojuvenilis copulation.

I saw six or more of the Rio Grande Grassland Tiger Beetles in just fifty yards.  I probably should have stayed with them a bit more but I decided to run up to La Puerta which is only fifteen miles farther up river and see if I could document the species for Starr County.  Unfortunately it started to cloud up with rain in the distance when I started walking up the trail.  So it was cloudy and cooler and very few insects were out.  But I did find my first Schaupp's Tiger Beetle for Starr County.  They shouldn't be rare out there and I don't know why it took so long to find one.

I ran back over to Yturria on the 6th and searched the north end of the tract by walking in on the power line trail up near the caliche pit.  There are some caliche outcrops and I was hoping for more neojuvenilis or maybe even the rare Cazier's Tiger Beetle.  There are also records of Eastern Red-bellied Tiger Beetle in the Valley and this would seem to be good habitat.  But I saw nothing but a few grasshoppers and polinating flies.  So I ran back down to the old entrance and found a single neojuvenilis where I had seen plenty four days earlier.

On Oct 9 I was ready to try La Puerta again.  It had been a week since the heavy rain and things had some time to start recovering from the drought.  Plants were growing like crazy but there was little in the way of flowers and few butterflies.  After the hot dry summer, plants need to grow and replace dead leaves before blooming.

So the target for the day switched to rare tiger beetles.  I would be happy with more Rio Grande Grassland TBs.  At the top of my wish list was the rare Cazier's Tiger Beetle.  Other remote possiblilities were Eastern Red-bellied TB and White-striped TB.  Pearson's Tiger Beetle field guide shows a tiny range for Cazier's TB in northern Starr and southern Jim Hogg Counties.  iNaturalist shows no records for Eastern Red-bellied TB and only three records of White-striped TB though there are plenty for other parts of Texas.  Pearson's tiger beetle guide show they are possible in the western edge of the RGV.

So I walked the first half mile of the trail to a junction without a single tiger beetle.  Here there is a big Texas Lantana patch which is good for butterflies but they weren't blooming yet.  So I took the trail to the west that passes through a rolling area of good Texas brush with caliche outcrops.  I have checked this area a dozen or more times in the past hoping for Cicendelidia cazieri to no avail.  It may well be too far to the south and out of the species's tiny range.  I found a schauppsi but that was it.

So I walked back to the main trail and told myself I don't know anything and I will just walk the trail and take what shows up.  I will let karma and serendipity take over.  I don't believe in that stuff  but damn it's worked in the past.  I took a few steps and a tiger beetle flushed ahead of me.  I looked through the camera and saw it was small and dark.  Oh oh.  I approached cautiously and started shooting photos.  Damn!  It was a Cazier's Tiger Beetle!  I couldn't believe it.

Wow that was cool.  Kind of weird too.  The endangered Cazier's Tiger Beetle was described in 1949 and named after famous Coleoptera expert Dr Mont A Cazier.  There are eight previous records on iNaturalist.  The first is a specimen from near Rio Grande City from 1981.  Then there were a series of of six records from May of 2010 submitted by the tiger beetle expert Giff Beaton, late Texas master birder Greg Lasley and famous RGV bird photographer Steve Bentsen, all from Steve's Dos Venados Ranch.  Finally Ben Yandell from Kentucky photogrpahed one in Oct 2019.  He has made a number of good tiger beetle finds through the years.

So Oct 11, I decided to make another run up to La Puerta to look for the Cassier's TB again.  Plants were looking great and some stuff was trying to bloom but few butterflies or any bugs for that matter.  Nothing for the first half mile up.  There was a small tiger beetle at the Cazier's spot but it was a Schaupp's TB.  So I walked up another half mile and saw nothing.

I returned to the half mile point and took the trail to the west to the caliche outcrops.  I was walking through a dried up muddy spot bordered by tall buffle grass when I spotted a tiny tiger beetle where I had seen schauppsi in the past.  I quickly got my camera on it.  Dark with a couple of white stipes....  White-striped Tiger Beetle!  There are oly three Valley records.  A specimen from Bentsen State Park in 1998 and photos by guess who?  Giff Beaton in 2017and Ben Yandell in 2019!  I got poor shots of a couple more White-striped TBs to double the number of RGV iNat records.

I was wanting to do one more tiger beetle trip for the year and pick up a few lifers but things are so good down here I may put them off till next year and look for more stuff down here.

West Texas Bug Trip, Part 2, 8/18-18/26

Well after cleaning up on my wanted tiger beetles, it was time to switch to butterflies.  In particular I wanted to look for a few of the Amblycertes roadside-skippers.  So once again I headed over to Balmorhea and down TX 17.  Since conditions were pretty dry I was just planning on hitting any flower patches I could find.  About halfway to Fort Davis I found a few flowers but mostly common butterflies.  I did see a few Dottled Roadside-Skippers.

And my only Nysa Roadside-Skipper for the trip.

And this really cool Rainbow Grashopper.

Probably best was this Ericrocis oil-digger cuckoo bee.

Not a lot else going one.  When I reached Fort Davis I turned onto TX 118 toward the high country. I was diapponted to find so few flowers.  I stopped at the scenic view picnic area for lunch. Few butterflies here also.  Best critter was a Crevice Spiny Lizard.

I made it up to the McDonald Observatory visitors center a little after noon and was happy to see the field by the parking lot with patches of some little Verbena like purple flowers.  And butterflies!  Sleepy Oranges are not too exciting.

But there were also some grasskippers.  It seems no two Huron Sachems are patterned alike but the shape and chevron of spots are constant..

There were more Dotted Roadside-Skippers.  Mostly well worn.

And then a funky colored grass skipper.  The greenish-golden underside of Slaty Roadside-Skipper is pretty distinct.  My only lifer butterfly for the trip.  I saw several.

I was hoping for Oslar's or Simius but the only other roadside-skippers I saw were Bronzed.

It was starting to cloud up so I raced up to the LE Wood roadside rest area but I was just getting started when the sky let loose with a real summer monsoon thunderstorm.  So I fought through the rain back to Balmorhea and ate another nice diner at Cueva de Oso.  Afterwards I ran over to Lake Balmorhea to check out the birds only to find the lake extremely low with few birds.  But checkig out the shoreline I found it seething with Ocellated Tiger Beetles.

I made my way along the damn and spied a gull on the far SW shore.  I raced over and caught a fleeting view of this immature Ring-billed Gull.

I got out the scope and started walking along the shore, checking out the distant Western and Clark's Grebes.  Then I noticed more Ocellated Tiger Beetles.  So why couldn't there be a few other species?  Since there weren't many birds I started sifting through the bugs and darned if I didn't find the first iNaturalist record of Thin-lined Tiger Beetle for Reeves County.  Must of been 8 to 10 of them.

The sun was starting to set and more tiger beetles popped out.  I was hoping to find Black Sky Tiger Beetle here as Tripp Davenport had found a couple years ago.  I got one.

I saw a piece of cardborad and turned it over hoping for a surprise.  Two Carolina Metallic Tiger Beetles shot out.  I chased one down for a photo.

And lastly I dug out both red and green morphs of the newly described Johnson's Tiger Beetle.

The next moring I decided I had accomplished my goals so I headed for home, taking the southern route through Sanderson and Del Rio.  I made a check of the Pecos River under the big bridge on US 90.  I always look here for Dotted Checkerspots.  The host Rock Penstemon was blooming but no butterfly.

Now that the water is a little higher in the Pecos River, Border Patrol has improvised a boat launch.  There I found my eighth species of tiger beetle for the trip; Punctured Tiger Beetle.

My timing was perfect as the high pressure system moved and now it's excruciatlingly hot out there in west Texas.  Hope fall comes soon.

West Texas Bug Trip, Part 1, 8/15-16/26

One of the things I wanted to do this summer was to make a trip out to the Davis Mountains for a couple of late summer tiger beetle species.  With the dog days of August having set in and every day here in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas over hundred degrees lately it seemed like the time to go.  They also have been getting some rain out there and that was what I had been hoping for.  And maybe I could pick up some good butterflies.

So I took off early Saturday morning.  Traffic was moderate but moving smoothly and I made it up to San Antonio and west on I 10 with no issues.  My only bug stop was at Live Oak Creek in Western Crockett County west of Ozona to look for odes (members of the order Odonata, dragonflies and damselflies).

I arrived and found water over the shallow crossing but soon found that was the only water and the spot down stream where I had found Leonora's Dancers last year was completely dry with all the formerly emergent grass dead.  Apparently they had not had much rain this year.  I did manage to dig out a Leonora's Dancer.

And a couple of Variable Dancers.

But otherwise it was only a few common odes.  I moved on to Fort Stockton where I would stay the next few nights.  I usually stay in Alpine or Fort Davis when visiting the Davis Mountains but I thought I would try Fort Stockton as it is quite a bit cheaper with better dining options though a few miles farther from my bugging destinations.

Sunday morning when I stepped out of the hotel for a quick run out for breakfast I got sidetracked by my lifer Mesquite Girdling Beetle.

The goal for the day was to search Boy Scout Road, FM 1832 on the north side of the Davis Mountains  for Western Red-bellied Tiger Beetle and Black Sky Tiger Beetle.  Nancy Norman and Galen Stewart had seen both species there a few years ago.  And maybe I could pick up a few good butterflies and odes.

One of the nice things about insects is that they are exothermic and don't become active till things warm up.  Birds on the other hand, being warm-blooded, are up at the break of day and you need to be early to enjoy them.  The world of bug watching is more relaxed.  You don't have to get up so early.  So I didn't reach Balmorhea till 9AM and I finally got to FM 1832 about 9:30.  It was looking dry as I drove though the first few miles of ranch land.  Not good.

But at mile 6.0 there was a wash that was still muddy from recent rain.  I pulled over to check it out.  Tiger beetle city!  First was the common Ocellated Tiger Beetle.  There were several.

But it didn't take long till a green one popped up.  Black Sky Tiger Beetle!  I had seen many of these on the Willcox Playa last year in Arizona but this is a rarely reported species for Texas.

As it got warmer more and more tiger beetles popped out including more Black Skys.

And then a small red one with white stripes.  I had hoped for White-striped Tiger Beetle but all of the nearby records were found at night. Quite a few Texas bug watchers survive by black lighting, attracting insects to an ultraviolet light at night. They get a lot of their insects the easy way.   However I had seen them during the day in Arizona and didn't see why they wouldn't be out in the mud here in  westTexas.  And they were!  I even found a copulating pair which I'm not sure has been photographed in Texas.

I still needed the Western Red-bellied Tiger Beetle.  And a pair soon appeared.  I've seen lots of these in Arizona but these were my first for Texas.

Meanwhile the Black Sky Tiger Beetles were really going at it.  My timing was very fortunate to hit this spot right after a rain.

Proably 95% of the Black Sky Tiger Beetles were of the green morph.  But I also found dark green, black and blue morps.

Well I got three Texas lifer tiger beetles at my first stop.  I saw very few farther up the road.  The next stop at a muddy creek turned up a nice Aztec Dancer.

The next stop yielded Mexican Forktail and Arroyo Bluet.

There were a few common butterflies.  My best for the day were was this Tropical Least Skipper, only my second ever.

I stopped for lunch under a soapberry grove.  A couple of  migrant Virginia's Warblers were a nice distraction.  I have not seen many of these in Texas.

Near the end of the road before the gate to the Boy Scout ranch I found this cool Tenebrionid beetle, Stenomorpha opaca.

And a bunch of baby Red-spotted Toads.

A couple more good butterflies were Common Streaky Skipper and Acacia Skipper.

On the return trip I picked up this cool Filigree Skimmer.

Pretty goood day!  I returned to Balmorhea and checked out the Cueva de Oso restaurant.  It was really good.  Then I made a late afternoon run over to the Sandia Wetlands.  There was a not a lot going on.  It was really overgrown.  I tried to make this Eastern ringtail into some kid of a good southwestern ringtail species but it was not to be.

Well I cleaned up on tiger beetles.  Tomorrow I will look for butterflies in the high country.