Quick NE Texas Bug Trip, 7/19-20/26

There are a couple of summer tiger beetles I wanted to find this year.  With the season for Eastern Red-bellied Tiger Beetle quickly coming to end, I thought I needed to make a quick run up to NE Texas.  Then while checking out the latest tiger beetle finds on iNaturalist, I saw Virginia Metallic Tiger Beetle was beeing seen in College Station.  Dang!  I loaded up the jeep and took off Sunday morning.

I needed to get some miles behind me so there wasn't much stopping.  But lunchtime arrived right when I came to the Coleto Creek crossing on US 77 just west of Victoria.  It's always a great place to stop.  I quickly ate my lunch and then checked out the bugs under the bridge.  Yellow and orange butterflies were puddling at the edge of Coleto Creek.  First a bunch of Cloudless Sulphurs.

And then an amazing five Julia Heliconians.  I'm sure the summer rain had something to do with so many being in an area where they are not normally common.

Then a little golden skipper.  What the???  It was a Least Skippering!  This was a new Texas species for me and one I was hoping to find in NE Texas.  Turns out this one is the first Victoria County record on iNat.

The afternoon was uneventful as I painfully made my way along crappy east Texas highways to College Station.  I checked in to my hotel, ate dinner and waited for dark.  Virginia Metallic Tiger Beetle is a nocturnal species.  And it's pretty darn common with over three hundred records in Texas on iNaturalist.  People often find them in their yards in east Texas.  They were being reported just a couple of nights prior along a bike trail in the Lick Creek Greenbelt.

I arrived at the trail head just before dark and looked around.  The concrete trail wound through a heavily wooded area.  I was hoping for hungry earlybirds that might give me some photographic opportunities in the waning light.  But not much going on.  As it got darker I saw a few dark shapes scamper along the edge of the vegetation.  Damn.  This might not be easy.  The sun went down at 8:45 and it was getting dark fast.  I bumped the ISO up to 12800.  That's all my old Canon 7D Mark II can do.   I had recently bought a cheap head lamp and I could tell it was not going to be sufficient.

Then I saw an inch long beetle scamper onto the concrete path.  I think this is it.  It ran like hell as I expected it would. Tiger beetles are thought to be the fastest land animal proportional to their size.  In fact they run so fast they have to periodically stop to allow their brains to interpret what they are seeing as they hunt.  There was no way my camera's autofocus was going to catch this speedy insect in my weak head lamp's light.  I switched to manual focus but still could not get it in my view finder.

But my light was strong enough to disorient the tiger beetle and it started running toward me.  To hell with trying to get a photo.  I'm going to grab that sucker.  And I did.  I got this photo with my iPhone.

Actually that turned out better than I had hoped.  Then a couple of minutes later I saw second.  This one was apparently eating its prey and allowed me to get close enough to get a camera shot.

The next morning I took off early.  It was still over two hours to my next destination.  The Gus Engling Wildlife Management Area area is the largest and probably the best known of the the many Texas Fish and Game's wildlife management areas.  The seven mile road passes though nearly ten thousand acres of oak and grass that is managed for hunting.  In recent years it has been a pretty reliable site for the hard to find Eastern Red-bellied Tiger Beetle, a species partial to open rocky or gravelly spots in wooded areas.

I found the spot on the north end of the preserve where a gravelly track runs to a small lake.  I had barely started walking when I spied a tiger beetle.  But it was just the uber common Ocellated Tiger Bettle.

Then a large bright rusty brown skipper.  I thought it was going to be a Silver Spotted Skipper but it turned out to be a Hoary Edge.  Only the second I've ever seen.

And then another tiger beetle but this one was a metallic blue with a white apical lunule.  Eastern Red-bellied Tiger Beetle!  I got lucky as this was the only one I saw and it cooperated nicely.

I spent the next couple of hours chasing dragon and damsel flies.  But by 1pm the temperature had reached the 90s and I was done for the day.  Mission accomplished!

East Texas Butterflies, 4/15-16/25

After spending the winter butterflying the Rio Grande Valley, Terry Mortier has been working his way home with time spent in east Texas.  His recent posts on the NABA Facebook group included a number of east Texas butterfly species I have never seen.  So I made a run up to Jasper to see what I could find.  Checking iNaturalist I saw Terry found a number of species around Indian Mounds camp ground east of Hemphill in eastern Sabine county.  One species I really wanted was the Lace-winged Roadside-skipper.  This well marked small skipper uses giant cane as a host plant, something I was not seeing as I explored the area.  The dry conditions with not much blooming was making for a slow morning.

As I approched the campground I saw a dirt track leading off CR 83 signed with an arrow pointing to Butler Point.  As I drove this road through the pines I started to see a few flowers and butterflies which were mostly common Carolina Satyrs and Little Wood Satyrs.  And then I saw a larger satyr; my lifer Creole Pearly Eye!

Then I saw another satyr that seemed larger than the Carolina Satyrs and flew differently.  It was the first of several Gemmed Satyrs.  My only previous Gemmed Satyr was one yeras ago at Resaca de la Palma.

As I walked the dirt track a little skipper popped up.  It sat on a leaf facing me but at enough of an angle that I scould see some pattern on its wings.  I fired the camera and couldn't believe what I saw.  It was a striking Lace-winged Roadside-Skipper.  I saw several later on and then noticed the bamboo growing in the area.

A flash of orange was a beat up Goatweed Leafwing.

A tiny rusty colored butterfly drifted down from the pine above and landed on the road.  Pine Elfin was a lifer for me just a year ago near Livingston, TX.

Then I saw another larger satyr.  This one turned out to be a Southern Pearly Eye.  My only other one was with Tom Pendleton back in 2011 when we made a dragonfly run to Boykin Springs.

A dark grass skipper proved to be a Dun skipper.

A beat up Red-banded Hairstreak.

Then I saw a medium sized dark brown butterfly with coppery band on the forewing and a flash of white below.  My first though was Silver-spotted SKipper.  I quickly shot a photo and was happy to get my lifer Hoary Edge.  That was another one I really wanted.

I returned to CR 83 and headed toward Indian Mounds camp ground.  At an intersection a cloudywing bounced from flower to flower.  I shot a few photos and assumed it was the usual Northern Cloudywing.  But after I returned home, I entered it into iNaturalist and AI's first choice was confused Cloudywing.  According to Glassberg, Confused Cloudywing can be lightly marked like a Northern but has a more distinct white eye line.  The jury is still out on this one but I'm hoping for a lifer Confused cloudywing.  It sure looks like some of the photos on BOA.

After a good afternoon I blew off the campground and headed into Hemphill for some dinner.  The next morning I was torn between going to Boykin Springs where I didn't really have any target species although I knew habitat would be good or spending another day to the east along the Sabine River.  I chose the later hoping to come across a Twin-spot Skipper even though iNat only showd two records for Texas for this southern skipper.  I was intrigued by a location on the map shown as the Wild Azalia Canyon Trail.  Turned out the trail had been overgrown for years and the surrounding area had been heavily logged.  And it was really dry.  After an uneventful morning I stopped at a small stream crossing for lunch.  I got an American Lady.

And then another Dun Skipper.

And then another small dark skipper.  What the hell.  It reminded me of a Eufala Skipper but lacked the bold eyebrow.  Julia's skipper?  Are they up here?  I took some shots and uon returning home I spent some time with the books.  Turns out I had completely forgotten about Swarthy Skipper, another Nastra species like Julia's.  Another lifer!

At this point I decided to run over to Martin Dies State Park and feed the mosquitos,  I soon came across a Red-spotted Admiral.

And Little Wood Satyr.

I was sure this black caterpillar was a butterfly but I was wrong.  It's an Eastern Buck Moth.

I probably should have spent another day but I wasn't feeling well so I headed on back to the RGV.  I don't particularly care for the east Texas piney woods.  I always feel some local is going to come up behind me with a shot gun and ask me to "squeel like a pig."  But there's a few more butterflies I need over there so I guess I'll go back some day.