Great Day at the National Butterfly Center, 6/25/26

It's been normally hot and breezy for this time of year in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.  But a Gold-spotted Aguna and a Ruby-spotted Swallowtail were reported at the Nationaal butterfly Center so I thought I had better get myself over there before everything fries.

It was hot and nasty when I stepped out of the apartment but when I got over to the NBC and started sweating a bit with a nice breeze it was fine.  My first butterfly was a Clytie Ministreak.  There were lots of them.

I worked the front garden a while and saw only common stuff.  Then all of a sudden, at about 11am, the hairstreaks started to pop.  First there was a White Scrub-Hairstreak.  New for the month!

And then a Ruddy/Muted.  This one never opened it's wings although the probability it's a Ruddy is about 99%.

But this one flashed orange when it flew so it's a male Ruddy Hairstreak.

Then the usual Dusky-blue Groundstreaks and Mallow Scrub-hairstreaks.  And then the common for this summer but usually rare Clench's Greenstreak.

Peggy had joined me by this time and two more Clench's showed up.  We totaled six of them for the morning with six species of hairstreaks in this one little fiddlewood.  Nearby I found the first of three Marius Hairstreaks,

A bit later I showed Peggy a blooming crucillo and explained to her it was the host plant for Band-celled Sister.  A minute later I was shocked when she called one out.  I got my camera out and shot a photo.  The band was wrong.  Not a Band-celled Sister.  Then I realized the under wings were all wrong and it was not even a sister.  It was a female Silver Emperor.  Another new one for the month!  We  had so many last winter I was expecting we would see some this summer.  It was a pretty easy to make mistake on the blooming Randia rhagocarpa.

It was a really good morning with eight species of hairstreaks and a Silver Emperor.  I drove to the south garden, ate my lunch and made another try for a ten hairstreak day.  I failed on my last try a few weeks ago.  The Curve-winged Metalmarks are still plentiful.

And plenty of Mexican Bluewings.  I caught this one in the act laying an egg on the Vasey's Adelia.

Then I noticed the Brush Holly patch was blooming.  This is our spot for daggerwings during summer.  Today it was covered in American Snouts but I did mange to pull out another Silver emperor.

Then I saw a Tachytes species of wasp just sitting there on a leaf waiting for a photo.  So I took one.  Woops it's not a wasp at all but a damn Dipteran!  The antennae say fly as to the tiny green vestigal wings.  I haven't entered it into iNaturalist yet but I'm guessing this is a Tachytes mimic.  Look at those freaky eyes!

It was getting warm.  I walked over to the blooming Mexican Orchid and found it loaded with Lyside and Large Orange Sulphurs and Great American Whites.  But one of them had spots.  First Giant White for the month.

There were several Western Giant Swallowtails.

And then the one I was looking for, a fresh Ornythion Swallowtail.

So a pretty fantastic day with four new species for the Big Board briging the June total to a record 92 species.  53 species today is pretty incredible for this time of year.

• Giant Swallowtail 5
• Ornythion Swallowtail 1
• Checkered White 6
• Great Southern White 20
• Giant White 1
• Large Orange Sulphur 25
• Lyside Sulphur 40
• Little Yellow 6
• Dainty Sulphur 6
• Marius Hairstreak 3
• Clench's Greenstreak 6
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• White Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 66
• Ruddy Hairstreak 3
• Dusky-blue Groundstreak 10
• Clytie Ministreak 15
• Cassius Blue 3
• Ceraunus Blue 5
• Reakirt's Blue 2
• Red-bordered Metalmark 1
• Curve-winged Metalmark 10
• American Snout 25
• Gulf Fritillary 4
• Mexican Fritillary 2
• Bordered Patch 12
• Texan Crescent 5
• Pale-banded Crescent 8
• Phaon Crescent 5
• Question Mark 3
• White Peacock 10
• Mexican Bluewing 12
• Tropical Leafwing 6
• Empress Leilia 1
• Tawny Emperor 12
• Silver Emperor 2
• Queen 5
• Soldier 5
• Brown Longtail 6
• Sickle-winged Skipper 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 3
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 6
• Laviana White-Skipper 5
• Common Sootywing 2
• Clouded Skipper 6
• Double-dotted Skipper 2
• Southern Skipperling 2
• Whirlabout 8
• Southern Broken-Dash 5
• Common Mellana 1
• Celia's Roadside-Skipper 10
• Eufala Skipper 5
• Mexican Crescent 10

National Butterfly Center, 4/27/26

While I was on my west Texas trip, the Valley got some rain and things have really greened out.  But the spring bird migration has been really good so butterflies have taken a back seat.  Which is fine because I didn't feel like battling the mosquitos.  So Monday I finally got over to the National Butterfly Center and it was alive with flowers and butterflies.  Granted most of them were Lyside Sulphurs and Reakirt's Blues.

On the big board in the visitors center, I saw Ornythion Swallowtail had been reported among the healthy for April 63 species.  So that was my target as I headed for the Mexican Orchid bush in the south garden.  It didn't take long.  But getting a photo of this amorous male was close too impossible as he chased the female Western Giant Swallowtails.  This was the best I could do.

Western Giant Swallowtail.

Nearby I saw a Gray Hairstreak on a blooming fiddlewood.  But the color and luster seemed off so I fired at a shot at what I expected would be a Marius Hairstreak.  Wrong again!  It was a sharp really fresh Red-lined Scrub Hairstreak.  I've never seen one in spring.

Lots of Clytie Ministreaks out.

Good to see a couple of Curve-winged Metalmarks out.

All of the big whites were Great Southern White.

Marine Blue is uncommon in the RGV.

And then there were these.  We've gotten Mexican Crescent happy in the last year.  Are these Mexican Crescents?  Or are they female Vesta?  That spot in the middle of the pale jagged median band has me concerned.  But I just went on Butterflies of American and solved my problem.  These are both males.  Male Vesta is distinctly two toned black and orange.  These are two male Mexican Crescents.  I feel better now.  I think.

Distracting me from the butterflies were the bees.  Lots of species out today.  I saw a dozen or more species.  These two little cuckoo bees will give me something to study.  Triepeolus?  Epeolus?  I've never seen one with a red scutellum.  For reference the flower head of the Bidens is about 5-6mm wide.  (PS:  The first one is Epeolus interruptus.  Oddly there are scattered records across the country but the only three from Texas are in the Valley with none in Mexico.  This was the first for Hidalgo County.  I'm still working on the second.)

And a few Nomada cuckoo bees.  Cuckoo bees are kleptoparasites meaning they lay their eggs in the nest of another species know as the host species.  The larvae consume the host larvae.

I should be out playing today but I wanted to get caught up on some of this stuff.  Also going to be hot with bad air quality today.  Up river Laredo had hazardous air quality yesterday thanks to a thermal inversion.

National Butterfly Center, 9/14/25

Well....  My original plan was to go to the HEB supermarket yesterday for groceries and then watch football.  But it was a nice moring so I thought what the hell.  I'll just go to the butterfly park and watch football afterwards.  The decision had disasterous consequences.  Well sort of.

Things started out great with at least a dozen Western Giant Swallowtails in the Mexican Orchid by the nursery.

Then a nice Guava Skipper popped in.  Probably the same one I glimsped last weekend.

Male Red-bordered Metalmarks are vastly under rated.

A few grasskippers were out.  Here is Clouded, Eufala, Wirlabout, and Double-dotted Skippers.

A walk up to the front gardens produced a nice Lanatana Scrub-Hairstreak.

And the first Common Sootywing I've seen in a while.

I'm discovering long-horned bees are a pain to ID except for a few easy ones like the female Tepanec Long-horned Bee with the black blotch on the stripe on abdominal segment four.

A return to the Mexican Orchid tree brought on a flurry of good butterflies.  First it was a Yellow Angled-Sulphur that my camera refused to focus on.  It was only present a few seconds as it often the case.  So I had to settle for a nearby Giant White.

I studied the flock (Do butterflies flock?) of Western Giant Swallowtails searching for an Ornython Swallowtail.  I got one!  It seems most of the ones we get are missing a large chunk of wing.  They have been blown a long ways in the wind and had to fight off a few predators.

Within a couple of minutes all three good butterflies were gone.  I watched the Mexican Orchid a while longer but nothing else unusual showed up.  So I headed for home.  

When I arrived I noticed I had a text from birder, butterflyer, and odester extraordinaire Martin Reid.  A Double-striped Thick-knee had just been found east of San Antonio near Nixon.  Yikes!  It is only the second ever north of Mexico.  As the first was taken as a specimen from the King Ranch in 1961, we've been waiting a long time.  I've seen a number of them in Chiapas near Palenque.

Well it was 2pm and I was exhausted and covered in sweat and sunscreen.  I just wasn't up for the five hour drive to maybe see the bird.  As it turned out a lot of people got it and it was still present in a pasture under a tree as the sun set.  But thick-knees are nocturnal shorebirds so it was just chilling as the hundred or so birders ticked it for their lists.  During the night it would be out feeding and there's a good possibility it might be elsewhere come morning.  So I decided to wait to see if it was refound.

Had I just gone to HEB and then watched football, I might have chased the bird when the word got out.  As I type this the Double-striped Thick-knee has not be refound.  Birders are searching on the private ranch.  I've always got an eye open for these guys as I bird the grasslands of Willacy county.  I guess I will just have to find my own.

Here's today's list of 38 species of butterflies.

• Pipevine Swallowtail 1
• Giant Swallowtail 20
• Ornythion Swallowtail 1
• Giant White 1
• Yellow Angled-Sulphur 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 1
• Large Orange Sulphur 15
• Lyside Sulphur 2
• Little Yellow 2
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak 1
• Cassius Blue 1
• Ceraunus Blue 8
• Red-bordered Metalmark 3
• American Snout 5
• Gulf Fritillary 1
• Bordered Patch 4
• Phaon Crescent 20
• White Peacock 1
• Mexican Bluewing 1
• Tropical Leafwing 3
• Queen 15
• Soldier 1
• Guava Skipper 2
• Brown Longtail 1
• White Checkered-Skipper 5
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 20
• Desert Checkered-Skipper 1
• Laviana White-Skipper 4
• Common Sootywing 1
• Clouded Skipper 8
• Double-dotted Skipper 3
• Southern Skipperling 1
• Fiery Skipper 1
• Whirlabout 3
• Southern Broken-Dash 1
• Common Mellana 1
• Eufala Skipper 6