National Butterfly Center, 11/18/25

The Texas Butterfly Festival has come and gone but new butterfly watchers are arriving in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas almost daily.  The assemblage of amatuer lepidopteristsa and warm south wind from Mexico results in lots of butterflies being seen in the RGV.  Last I saw yesterday the running species count for the month of November at the National Butterfly Center was at 125.  Amazing!  There have been no new records or mega finds but lots of good stuff is being found by those out plying the trails.

I've been taking it easy and trying not to get burned out.  Consequently I have missed a lot of the good stuff but I'm not complaining.  Here's a little of what I've seen the past few days starting with yesterday's Guatemalan Cracker.

I ran over yesterday hoping for the Hoary Skipper but I missed it.  So I had to glean from left over Glazed Pellicia, White-patched Skipper and Red-bordered Pixies.

Finally we are seeing a few Julia's Skippers.

The male Silver emperor was putting on a show.  Where's the blue?  You just have to change your angle!  Blue coloration of birds and butterflies are often caused by by microscopic structural reflections and not blue pigment.

Malachites are occuring daily.

I pointed visiting birders to this Guava Skipper.  They were grateful.

Mexican Bluewings have been in short supply.

But not the rare Mexican Crescent.

Here's the morning Ruby-spotted Swallowtail.  We have seen nearly a dozen this fall.

As I was leaving one more butterfly caught my eye.  Woops.  Look at those antennae.  This is the diurnal White-tipped Black Moth.

With good wind and good observers in the field, we're bound to get something remarkable in the coming weeks.

Zapata Museum of History, 10/22/25

After my good day in Zapata last week I thought it was worth another effort.  Also I noticed I was second on iNaturalist on the list of butterflies for not often visited Zapata County.  Can't have that.  So I got a pretty early start and arrived at the butterfly garden  at the Zapata Museum of History at 9:30.  Queens were already out in force.

Got a photo of the Pipevine Swallowtail I missed last week.

Time to start digging through the skippers.  Lots of Huron Sachems.

I discovered the garden also goes behind the Museum.  Ocola Skippers have really invaded the Valley during the past few weeks.

And then an Ocola with the forewing extending back too far.  Purple-washed Skipper!  There were several, some even showing the extra spot.

And then another new one for my Zapata County list....  Turk's-Cap White-Skipper, a nice female which I don't see very often.

Back in the front was a fresh Skinner's (formerly Coyote) Cloudywing.

And a fresh Julia's Skipper.

And an Olive-clouded Skipper.  Very few records for these last two in Zapata County.

And then another trip to the back netted an Erichson's White-Skipper.  These are probably not rare up here.

38 species seems pretty good for that garden, almost half of them from the familiy Hesperiidae.  As Jeff Bryant said it was a skipperlicious day!

• Pipevine Swallowtail 1
• Southern Dogface 6
• Cloudless Sulphur 5
• Orange-barred Sulphur 20
• Lyside Sulphur 20
• Little Yellow 2
• Sleepy Orange 2
• Gray Hairstreak 10
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 5
• Ceraunus Blue 10
• Fatal Metalmark 1
• American Snout 5
• Gulf Fritillary 15
• Theona Checkerspot 1
• Bordered Patch 3
• Elada Checkerspot 1
• Phaon Crescent 1
• Common Buckeye 1
• White Peacock 8
• Queen 80
• Dorantes Longtail 1
• Coyote Cloudywing 2
• Sickle-winged Skipper 1
• White-patched Skipper 2
• Funereal Duskywing 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 2
• Erichson's White-Skipper 1
• Turk's-cap White-Skipper 1
• Julia's Skipper 1
• Clouded Skipper 25
• Fiery Skipper 40
• Whirlabout 1
• Sachem 25
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 3
• Eufala Skipper 40
• Olive-clouded Skipper 1
• Ocola Skipper 8
• Purple-washed Skipper 5

Santa Ana NWR, 8/4/24

We had quite a bit of rain a couple of weeks ago so I ran over to Santa Ana NWR yesterday to check out the conditions.  In particular I wanted to check out the lakes and see if they had any water and maybe some dragonflies.  Turns out there is no surface water at all.  The thirsty ground soaked up all the rain so things actually look pretty lush despite the ponds all being dry.  Unfortuanately the refuge staff had mowed the dry Willow Lakes complex to prepare for the fall waterfowl season and in the process wiped out the balloon vines which had produce a good crop of lovely Silver-banded Hairstreaks earlier in the summer.  I couldn't find any so heres a photo from June14.

There was a nice patch of frog fruit which attracted a bunch of Phaon Cresents and this Julia's Skipper.

I've recently gotten adicted to iNaturalist and to native bees in particular.  I've yet to work out an ID on these little green sweat bees.  The blooming flower head is only about 5 mm wide.

So I wandered back over to the tour road and found the Tenaza were blooming.  For some reason they always all bloom on the same day and are only open a couple of days.  They were loaded with butterflies, mostly American Snouts, but I did mange to pick out a good one.  I am guessing this is the first Gold-spotted Aguna to be seen in the US this year.

Also nectering on the fluffy Tenaza blooms were White-striped and Brown Longtails.  They have been hard to find this year.

Also high in the Tenaza were Large Orange Sulphurs and Soldiers.

Mimosa Skippers are usually found on the ground.  They use the thorny pink mimosas that grow in area ditches as a host plant.  It's unusual to see one up in the Tenaza.

It was getting hot so I returned to the old manager's residence area and checked out the only blooming white lantana.  There were several Common Mestras.

And this metalmark looking somewhat in between a Fatal and a Rounded.  I'm guessing it's a Rounded.

Earlier I had noticed activity in the butterfly garden at the entrance to the parking lot.  So afer cooling down and having some lunch I checked it out.  A medium sized yellow with a boyant flight had me thinking of Dina Yellow but it was the more common Boisduval's Yellow which is actually pretty uncommon at Santa Ana.  I think this is the lightly makred summer form.

Well that was nice.  A few Phaon Crescents bounced around the non native flowers (I can't remember the name) by the entrance kiosk and one was a little larger.  This beat up Pale-banded Cresent is my first of the year.

So things are starting to pick up as the summer progresses.  Unfortunately we have a week of 100 degrees temperatures ahead with no rain.  Maybe that little low pressure brewing in the Caribbean can help us out.

Progreso Lakes, 5/5/22

It's been hot, windy and dry at Progreso Lakes with few butterflies.  But there was an influx of humidity today and with it came mosquitos and some lepidoptera.  A real surprise was our third ever Marine Blue.

Our Frogfruits are blooming like crazy and attracting little things like blues, cresents and this tiny Julia Skipper.

Nice to see a Common Mellana.

Several Vesta Crescents popped up.

I like this boldly marked Large Orange Sulphur.

Unusual shot of a Little Yellow.

Twenty eight species are the most I've seen in quite a while.

• Black Swallowtail 1
• Giant Swallowtail 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 1
• Large Orange Sulphur 2
• Little Yellow 6
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 5
• Dusky-blue Groundstreak 1
• Marine Blue 1
• Ceraunus Blue 3
• Reakirt's Blue 5
• Texan Crescent 3
• Vesta Crescent 3
• Phaon Crescent 2
• Carolina Satyr 1
• Queen 5
• Brown Longtail 2
• Mournful Duskywing 2
• White Checkered-Skipper 5
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 3
• Julia's Skipper 1
• Clouded Skipper 4
• Southern Skipperling 4
• Fiery Skipper 1
• Whirlabout 2
• Common Mellana 1
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 3
• Eufala Skipper 1