Well I found a fantastic butterfly at the National Butterfly Center yesterday and rather than "beating my breast", I'm feeling a little sheepish about it. The sayings "I'd rather be lucky than good" and "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day" probably apply.
With the parade of rare to uncommon butterflies st the National Butterfly Center, I ran over yesterday to take another try at finding something really good. I was fortunate that Ryan Shaw was down from Katy and Tom Forwood, the new Superintendent at nearby Bentsen State Park, came over. So there were some good eyes in the field. They found some good stuff too including a Gray Cracker and a Dingy Purplewing.
Meanwhile I was stumbling around, checking the fiddlewoods and finding some pretty good stuff like more Clench's Greenstreaks and Marius Harstreaks. But they are rather ho-hum this summer. As lunch time approached I drove to the lower garden, ate lunch and then checked the Mexican Orchid bush for swallowtails. I've twice seen Ornythion there this summer and Woody had one the day before. Not much going on. So I checked out the bait logs and ran into Danny Salinas. He told me about the Dingy Purplewing. I left him looking for the Gray Cracker and I decided to go back to the upper garden for the purplewing.
As I walked back to the jeep I decided to check the Mexican Orchid again. Nothng great. Then I remembered the little blooming fiddlewood under the chomonque. I need to check that again. So I did and there was a pretty Curve-winged Metalmark and a damn snout and a really pretty Clytie Ministreak. So I took a few photos. As I photographed the ministreak, I remember a voice in my head saying "That one looks a little weird. Remember to check it out later." Yeah. Sure.
So this moring I edited my photos and started putting them into iNaturalist. When I entered the pretty Clytie, the idiot iNat Ai suggested Tmolus echion as a first choice with Clytie Ministreak second. What the hell? Then I looked at the photos of Tmolus echion which they call Lantana Hairstreak (Glassberg calls it Red-spotted Hairstreak.) The first thing I noticed was the postmedion band looked like my photo and not the usual M shape of a Clytie. And then... duh... my Clytie lacked the tell tale red cell end bar. Other than the green eyes, that's the most important field mark. I'm so stupid. I had always wanted to see a Red-spoted Hairstreak and I had one handed to me and I completely missed it. iNaturalist saved me.
So I put put it on the Dischord alert and apologized profusely for not getting the word out earlier on this very rare butterfly. Turns out Mike Rickard had found one back in 2017 and it's listed as rare in Glassberg's 2012 edition. So this has got to be one of my all time best butterfly finds. Tmolus echion is a lifer for me and only the second iNat record for the USA.
