We fought off winter a long time this fall here in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, but yesterday it finally arrived in a fury and it's in the upper 30's as I write this. We're supposed to have freezing temps the next two mornings so our fantastic fall butterfly season of 2025-26 may offically be over. We have had a few cold cloudy days in the 50s so butterfly numbers have been knocked down but decent stuff was still showing during the past few warm days. This friendly Banded Peacock has been a popular photographic subject at the National Butterfly Center.
The same patch of spring mist flower head a White Scrub-Hairstreak for several hours.
Mazan's Scallopwing is pretty uncommon at the NBC so this was a nice find by the palapa. Twenty two minutes later I found a second at the Hackberry Trail crossover where the above two butterflies were found. But later inspection of the photos found these two bugs to be the same butterfly. So it had moved about 80 yards in those 22 minutes. Pretty cool to document that movement. The image differences are due to the old 7D Mk II struggling with exposures. Or maybe it's the photographer's fault.
Terry Mortier found a Mexican Silverspot ovipositing on passion vine. All I could find was this Zebra Longwing doing the same thing.
After a fall without Rounded Metalmark I finally found one. At least that is my guess and the iNaturalist AI concurs.
Mexican Bluewings have been in short supply. This looks like a freshly eclosed male.
My best find on the last warm day was this Falcate Skipper, my first for the new year.
It has been a good fall for Marius Hairstreaks. This is what they typically look like.
But late in the afternoon we found this thing. It as the gray eyes of the genus Rekoa, but seemed a little off. The dark smudgey PM band had me thinking about Smudged Hairstreak Rekoa stagira. But looking at photos on BOA it seems the white edges of the PM band are too bright and it has too many blue scales below the thecla and is more likely a boldly marked marius.
And finally last Sunday there was this dark, almost black grass skipper at Santa Ana NWR. I saw it for only a few seconds. I know of no regularly occuring grass skipper that is so dark and seemingly unmarked about. I think it's a first US record for something. Glassberg won't speculate. I will try sending the photos to a few others. There are several dark skipper possibilities to the south in Mexico. But there may not be enough in the photos to make a positive ID.
They have us warming back to above 70 on Thursday. We'll see. It will be interesting to find who survives the cold.
