Wild Day Part II, Hairstreak-o-mania! 12/22/15

After Mark's call, I walked back to the car and proceeded to race the 19 miles to the National Butterfly Center hoping to see the Vicroy's Ministreak.  When I reached Hidalgo, I got another call.  Telea Hairstreak!!!  I had just missed one last week in the crotons at the NBC and had missed the one last year at Barry Nall's place that everyone else had seen and had missed the one at the Tanglewood coma a few weeks ago.  I was due!

When I arrived I was happy to find my butterfly friends guarding crotons and keeping an eye on the hairstreaks so picking up my life butterflies was a piece of cake.  First came the Telea Hairstreak.  What a tiny beautiful emerald!

And then it was the Vicroy's Ministreak.  This was previously thought of as a green eyed Gray Minstreak but was recently described as a new species.  Another tiny gem!

A Ruddy type hairstreak had also been found.  This one did not flash orange so we can't be sure if it's a female Ruddy (most likely) or a Muted (very rare).

And then another Strophius Hairstreak.  We had one just last month.

So that makes four pretty rare hairstreaks.  And then there were the more common ones, like this fabulous Great Purple Hairstreak.

And another green one, Silver-banded Hairstreak.

And the not-so-striking Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak.

And a sharp winter form Clytie Ministreak.

The very common Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak in its winter form.

And two for the price of one, Gray Hairstreak and Dusky-blue Groundstreak.

Yesterday's Gray Ministreak could not be found but we still finished with an amazing eleven species of hairstreaks.  That will be a tough record to break.  But it will be fun trying.

Falcon Dam area, 7/2/15

Honey and I went up river today to see if we could find anything different during this unusually productive summer.   A stop at Barry Nall's place in Falcon Heights produced his two Polydamas Swallowtails.  It's been a few years since I have seen one.

We next visited the butterfly gardens at Falcon State Park.  The west side of Starr County has not received the rain we have had lately in the rest of the Valley so it was pretty dry.  But there were plenty of small croton blooming along with the Betony mistflower and a few lantanas.  There were lots of hairstreaks in the crotons and the Ruddy that Honey found for me was the best.

There had to be at least twenty Mallow Scrub-Hairstreaks.

And we probably had at least a dozen Lantana Scrub-Hairstreaks.

Here's a Turk's-cap White-Skipper.

This spider took a swipe at a Whirlabout and missed so he decided to get a better vantage point and wait.

A stop at the Roma World Birding Center garden found the gate unlocked but it was extremely dry with few butterflies.  One last stop at Yturria Brush found lush conditions and plenty of blooming flowers but not a lot of butterflies.  I did find several Two-barred Flashers.

I don't feel like doing a list today.  I guess I'm listless.

National Butterfly Center, 6/6/14

Four hours at the National Butterfly Center turned up 35 species.  There's lots of flowers in bloom and it's just a matter of time till something good shows up.  Best butterfly today was this Ornythion Swallowtail

It's been a while since I've seen a Common Streaky-Skipper.  This one seemed partial to landing on dead flower heads for perfect camouflage.

Lantana Scrub-Hairstreaks are showing up all over the RGV.  The winter rains were good for the their host plant, Texas Lantana.  Now I need to find one with black eyes.

There's been a few Crimson Patches around the park for the past few months.  Today I also saw several of their caterpillars.

The snake herbs have had a good colony of Cyna Blues this year.

And a really nice Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak

And here's our dragonfly for the day, a very cool Flag-tailed Spinylegs.  Members of the family Gomphidae are referred to as clubtails and this one has one heck of a club.

Our Yard, 12/29/13

It's been a cold damp December.  Finally the sun came out today for a while and butterflies soon followed.  I think I saw only 18 species.  Most interesting was this brightly patterned Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak.

I started our yard list on Aug 30 and today picked up butterfly #76, a Sleepy Orange.

Every time the sun pops out, our local Monarch comes to visit.

This Dainty Sulphur sure is ...uhm.....dainty!

National Butterfly Center, 10/26/13

With the south winds cranking up I thought it would be worthwhile to the check out the National Butterfly Center this morning.  Nothing exciting.  Best was this Violet-banded Skipper.

And a cooperative Coyote Cloudywing.

How about some hairstreaks?  Here's a nice Dusky-blue Groundstreak.

And a cute Clytie Ministreak.

And a common Gray Hairstreak.

And his equally common Strymon cogener (is that a word?) Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak.

Over at Frontera Audubon Thicket in Weslaco, Mike Rickard found me another Strymon, this Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreak.

We found this really neat caterpillar at NBC.  Right now I have no clue as to whether it's a butterfly or moth, but I'm starting to lean towards moth.  It was 2-2.5 inches long.

Yesterday I ran up to Sal del Rey unit of the Lower Rio Grande NWR to check out the birds.  On the walk out I was surprised to find this Potrillo Skipper.

Our yard, 9/22/13

I've been working on a butterfly garden in our yard after the drought killed all the grass.  I've got quite a bit done but the recent wet weather has slowed things down.  However I am starting to pick up a few butterflies.  They just happen to be all the common tiny stuff so far.  And here's the smallest, a Western Pygmy-Blue on my Scorpion's Tail.

A couple more on the Scorpion's Tail were these two common hairstreaks, Gray Hairstreak.

And Mallow-scrub Hairstreak.  I like the little bee cruising by.

Here's a bright Southern Broken-Dash.

Every one likes the Zexmenia which is now considered a Wedelia including this Little Yellow.

And this Elada Checkerspot.

And this Vesta Crescent.

The bigger butterflies just fly on by.