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.

Violet-banded Skipper at Progreso Lakes, 11/9/21

Eleven days ago Barbara Volkle, Steve Moore and I got to see a Violet-banded Skipper in our Progreso Lakes yard for a total of about two seconds.  There it was and there it went.  Well I saw another one today and it stayed for a total of 34 seconds.  That was the elapsed time between my first photo and my last.  And then it was gone.  This Mexican grass skipper is so distinctly marked that it doesn't take long to identify it.

The Tailed Orange didn't stay much longer.

We've had very few Julia's Skippers since the February freeze.

Still several Double-dotted Skippers around.

My bait station hosted a few Tawny Emperors, a couple of South Texas Satyrs and a Red Admiral.

A very fresh Cloudless Sulphur chrysalis. 

44 species on the day was not too bad.  I'm leading butterfly trips for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival over the next few days so maybe we can come up with something interesting.

• Pipevine Swallowtail 1
• Giant Swallowtail 3
• Great Southern White 3
• Orange Sulphur 1
• Southern Dogface 1
• Cloudless Sulphur 6
• Large Orange Sulphur 2
• Tailed Orange 1
• Little Yellow 2
• Gray Hairstreak 1
• Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 3
• Dusky-blue Groundstreak 1
• Ceraunus Blue 1
• American Snout 1
• Gulf Fritillary 1
• Bordered Patch 2
• Vesta Crescent 1
• Phaon Crescent 2
• Painted Lady 1
• Red Admiral 1
• White Peacock 6
• Tawny Emperor 6
• Carolina Satyr 3
• Monarch 3
• Queen 25
• Soldier 6
• White-striped Longtail 3
• Dorantes Longtail 6
• Brown Longtail 12
• Sickle-winged Skipper 8
• White Checkered-Skipper 6
• Tropical Checkered-Skipper 6
• Laviana White-Skipper 4
• Julia's Skipper 1
• Clouded Skipper 15
• Double-dotted Skipper 3
• Southern Skipperling 3
• Fiery Skipper 8
• Whirlabout 5
• Sachem 3
• Common Mellana 3
• Eufala Skipper 4
• Ocola Skipper 1
• Violet-banded Skipper 1

National Butterfly Center, 2/21/14

With all the cold weather we've had this winter, it's been difficult to see ten species of butterflies.  But it got really hot yesterday with a strong southerly wind, followed by a weak cold front last night so I thought today might be a good day at the National Butterfly Center.  Turns out I was right.  The weather was perfect and I saw 43 species of butterflies, many new for the year.  Exciting for me was my first Goatweed Leafwing.  I think I've seen it before up north but it was my first for the Valley.

The rest of 'em were among our more common species.  I guess this beat up female Black Swallowtail was less common.

If Clouded Skippers were rare, we would get all excited about them.  The winter form is pretty sharp looking.

Many of our butterflies have a tropical look to them, but Orange Sulphur looks like something you would see up north.

Even during some pretty cold days this winter you could still find a Red Admiral.

Our two duskywings, Funerial and Mournful, often present ID problems.  Today all I saw at the NBC were Funerial Duskywing.

When I got home, the first thing I saw in the garden was a couple of Mournful Duskywings.  They are really different.