National Butterfly Center, 7/13/25

Meanwhile......  With the summer rain, Stephanie and the crew at the National Butterfly Center have the place looking great.  Plants are lush and blooming and screaming for butterflies.  The warm, humid wind has been blowing pretty hard from the southeast the past few days, feeding the Hill Country flooding, and I was hoping it might bring up some of our rare summertime swallowtails.  Not super rare but this beat up Ornythion Swallowtail was appreciated.  It's had a tough trip from Mexico!

Our usual Western Giant Swallowtails are supeficially similar but obviously a much brighter yellow.  The marginal spots on the hind wing are also shaped differently.

My first butterfly of the day was this tasty Red-bordered Pixie.  I saw two today and a couple more were reported last week.  So they are back baby!

My other metalmark species for the day was a pair of Red-bordered Metalmarks.

Fiddlewoods were blooming nicely and attracting hairstreaks.  Here are the common Gray Hairstreak, Dusky-blue Groundstreak and Clytie Ministreak.

Beewise I got a lifer today.  This is the tiny Cobalt Small Carpenter Bee.  I have probbly seen them in the past and passed them of as a metallic sweat bee.  But thas bulbous abdomen is pretty distinct.  I wish I had gotten better photos.

I think this guy is a bee also but I have some research to do.  It looks familiar.

Thy've had a lot of rain in Mexico so it should be about time for the butterfly factories to send some beauties out way.  I need to start a weekly survey of the park.

Last Butterflies before the Freeze at NBC, 1/18/25

The strongest cold front of the winter is scheduled to blast in tomorrrow and the butterflies at the National Butterfly Center were out enjoying one last glorious warm day.  The wind was from the south yesterday however today it had already switched from the north and despite that, the temperature was still in the 80's.  Now sure of the effect of this on the species composition of butterflies.  There were no real Mexican rarities but a few local uncommon species were out, some pretty fresh.  Best was this Caballo (formerly Potrillo) Skipper.

A White-patched Skipper was close by.

And later a Texas Powdered-Skipper popped up in the same Azureum patch.

And with it a fresh Marius Hairstreak.  It was a lifer for visiting butterflier Jeff Pavlik who I notice is a couple butterflies ahead of me on eButterfly.  But I recently discovered a few Australian lifers while putting bugs into iNaturalist so maybe I can get back ahead.

Here's a good looking Dusky-blue Groundstreak.

And the humble but still sharp looking Gray Hairstreak.

John Rosford found the bug of the day.  I have yet to ID this litle lady beetle but I'm pretty sure it's a lifer.

35 species is pretty good for mid January.  In a couple of days there won't be any and then we start the slow build up into spring.

• Pipevine Swallowtail 2
• Southern Dogface 2
• Large Orange Sulphur 2
• Lyside Sulphur 6
• Little Yellow 5
• Sleepy Orange 2
• Marius Hairstreak 1
• Gray Hairstreak 3
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 3
• Dusky-blue Groundstreak 1
• Ceraunus Blue 4
• Reakirt's Blue 1
• Fatal Metalmark 1
• American Snout 10
• Mexican Fritillary 1
• Texan Crescent 1
• Phaon Crescent 4
• Red Admiral 4
• White Peacock 3
• Mexican Bluewing 1
• Monarch 2
• Queen 4
• Dorantes Longtail 1
• Brown Longtail 2
• Potrillo Skipper 1
• Texas Powdered-Skipper 1
• White-patched Skipper 1
• Funereal Duskywing 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 5
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 2
• Laviana White-Skipper 5
• Clouded Skipper 4
• Fiery Skipper 3
• Sachem 2
• Eufala Skipper 6

Henry's Elfin in San Antonio, 3/2/24

Every early spring I see photos on Facebook of Henry's Elfin from east Texas and I think someday I will go up and see one.  Well yesterday I got up early and was deciding where to go for the day.  Brownsville Landfill for gulls?  Salineno to refind the Crane hawk?  Resaca de la Palma for that darn Cassin's Vireo?  I also had been thinking about running over to east Texas to look for Henry's Elfin.  They had been seen at Brazos Bend.  Recently I've been entering butterflies into iNaturalist and learning how to use it and I though maybe I could find a closer Henry's Elfin.  Well I put it into the search engine and darned if Henry's Elfin wasn't being seen in San Antonio at Hardberger Park.  Weather look great for the day so I packed up the jeep and headed north.

When I arrived at Phil Hardberger Park I realized I had no idea where to look.  I haven't put iNaturalist on my phone yet so I tried to remember where where the Henry's Elfin was being see.  I remembered something about a native palnt garden.  I new they liked redbuds but I wasn't seeing any.  So I wandered around seeing only Red Admirals and a gray Hairstreak on the blooming Agaritas and Mountain Laurels.  Then I found a lone scraggly redbud near the fenced in demonstration garden.  And sure enough it held my lifer Henry's Elfins.

I had never seen any of the Elfins and they turned out to be larger than I thought, about the size of the many nearby Juniper Hairstreaks.  I never get tired of these guys.

Gray Hairstreak seem to be about everywhere I go.

I also found a couple of Henry's Elfins on a nearby wild plum.

Red Admirals were abundant as they have been in the Valley this spring.

Well that was nice!  I celebrated at Bill Miller's BBQ and headed home.  There are still many butterfly species I have not seen in the state.  Maybe I will get a few of them this year.

Ruddy Hairstreak? at Progreso Lakes, 2/22/22

After a lot of cold weather, things have warmed up for a few days and butterflies are out.  Our elbow bush is blooming up a storm and attracting a few hairstreaks so I paid extra attention to it today and got rewarded with a tiny little hairstreak that I instantly recognized as new for the yard.  It was the size of Ruddy Hairstreaks I have seen in the past though I was getting no orange color above.  After getting a bunch of photos I went into the house to look at them and come up with an ID.  It looked a lot like Ruddy Hairstreak though I didn't like how the post median band was so far from the thecla spot.  It looked much like Mathew's Hairstreak in Glassberg's book but that one has some pale cell end bars.  I posted the photos on Facebook and most agreed it looked like a Ruddy Hairstreak.  Muted Hairstreak is pretty much identical but seems to be very rare in the RGV.  Males can be separated by the color of the upper wings but we don't know how to ID females.

So in conclusion I'm calling it a Ruddy Hairstreak untill someone can prove different.  And either way it's yard butterfly #143.

Here's one of several Gray Hairstreaks form the same elbow bush.

And there were a couple of Dusky-blue Groundstreaks.

New for the year was this Turk's-cap White-Skipper.

Lots of copulating today.  Here's Gulf Fritillaries and Whirlabouts.

This winter form South Texas Satyr is pretty much spotless.

We had 31 species today but I'm to tired to make a list now.  More warm weather tomorrow.

Overnight arrival!, 10/14/14

Lately we've had plenty of butterflies in our little garden but diversity was low and it was hard to see ten species in a day.  The recent cool front has changed all that and today our yard was invaded by 38 species of butterflies.  Best bug today was probably this Sickle-winged Skipper.

This is the first Pearl Crescent I've photographed in our yard.

I wondered why this Whirlabout was so big till I figured out it was a Sachem.

A big juicy Monarch stopped by for a rest.

A very colorful Gray Hairsteak.

There was sure plenty of romantic action on display.  Here's a Cassius Blue with a Ceraunus Blue, two Vesta Crescents and two Fiery Skippers.

Here's the list for today.

• Giant Swallowtail 1
• Checkered White 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 4
• Large Orange Sulphur 3
• Lyside Sulphur 12
• Little Yellow 4
• Sleepy Orange 1
• Dainty Sulphur 1
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Western Pygmy-Blue 2
• Cassius Blue 2
• Ceraunus Blue 10
• American Snout 5
• Gulf Fritillary 2
• Elada Crescent 2
• Vesta Crescent 5
• Phaon Crescent 3
• Pearl Crescent 1
• White Peacock 1
• Monarch 1
• Queen 120
• Soldier 1
• Guava Skipper 1
• Brown Longtail 2
• Sickle-winged Skipper 1
• Mournful Duskywing 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 3
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 15
• Laviana White-Skipper 2
• Clouded Skipper 4
• Southern Skipperling 1
• Fiery Skipper 20
• Whirlabout 3
• Southern Broken-Dash 3
• Sachem 1
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 1
• Eufala Skipper 3

Silver Emperor at NBC, 6/17/14

It's been hot and dry lately with few butterflies, but I figured I would head on over to the National Butterfly Center anyway cuz I'm not going to see much just sitting around the house.  When I arrived Marianna told me Louie had just seen a female Silver Emperor.  Well it took me nearly four hours of wandering around and sweating profusely but she finally showed up on bait log #2.  What a beauty!  I had seen one years ago at Santa Ana but these are my first photos.  I was surprised how big it is.

Down in the ditch seemed to be the most productive place to get mosquito bitten and find interesting butterflies.  Second place today goes to this Two-barred Flasher.

Another good bug in the ditch was this surprise Soldier.  I have not seen one in months.

And yet another ditch denizen was this shade loving Fawn-spotted skipper, another species I have not seen lately.

The biggest surprise in the ditch was a cluster of twenty two Dusky-blue Groundstreaks all roosting at the base of a hackberry.  Pretty weird.  Eight are visible in this photo.

Back in the sunshine, I found this sharp female Red-bordered Metalmark, another species I have not seen in months.  This is really an underrated bug.

Here's a fresh Gray Hairstreak.

And I'll finish with a Crimson Patch on frogfruit.