Rio Grande Valley Butterflies: Ruby-spotted Swallowtail

Showing posts with label Ruby-spotted Swallowtail. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Finishing up 2025 at the NBC, 12/27-28/25

A cold front was scheduled to hit the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas on the 29th so I took advantage of the 85F warm weather at the National Butterfly Center. As had been the case lately, the park had plenty of good butterflies though nothing earth shattering. The Northern Faceted-Skipper (Malicious Skipper) in the ditch has been a lifer butterfly for most. I got my best shots of it.

Butterflies in the Family Nymphalidae have only four legs. But they are insects so where are the other two legs? The front pair of legs are reduced in size. In the case of this Pavon Emperor they are day glow green and flank the green proboscis.

I've seen more Red-lined Scrub-Hairstreaks this fall than I had in total the past twenty years.

Lots of Western Pygmy Blues lately.

Early on the 28th Ryan Rodriguez found a Clench's Greenstreak. Later in the day I thought I ad had found a second. But this scruffy bug turned out to be a Telea Hairstreak. The PM band is hard to see.

Here's a nice Marius Hairstreak. It has gray eyes as do other members of the Genus Rekoa.

One of the better Band-celled sister I've ever seen.

The 28th finished with this spectacular Ruby-spotted Swallowtail putting on a show.

Unfortunately for me I missed two fantastic butterflies. Kristy Baker has a fresh Guatemalan Leafwing in her yard. There are only a handful of records in the USA. The one I saw was pretty scruffy. At least eight people made the 40 mile drive to her yard and all missed it. The second fatastic butterfly was a Rusty-tipped Page found by Jim Snyder at Resaca de la Palma. He only got one shot of this large congener of the Malachite. Having butterflied a lot in the tropics he had seen many and had no idea it was so rare up here and reported it a little late.

It's 56F as I write this on the 30th. But we warm to the 80s again in a couple of days so there no reason we can't get some more of these rare butterflies.

Sunday, December 14, 2025

Just Another Fantastic Day at the NBC, 12/13/25

Any other December this would be considered a pretty fantastic day. But this year it's ho-humm. Same old stuff. I was telling Chris Balboni and Terry Mortier how spoiled we are. They concurred. After a two week absence, Ruby-spotted Swallowtails were back.

The cry "Malachite on the bait log!" usually brings people running. With most of the visiting butterfly watchers gone, this one fed in peace.

Here's a fresh male Mexican Bluewing. Not many of these guys around lately.

Yesterday's pristine Band-celled Sister now has a bite missing from the hind wings. It's a dangerous world out there.

A formerly rare Mexican Crescent was on the tiny Tridax patch.

I am not a photographer. I set my camera ISO from 400 to 1600, depending on light, and shift it into P Mode and let the old Canon 7D Mk II do all the thinking. RAW? What the hell is that? It's JPEG all the way. This works OK most of the time. But she really stuggles with black and red as in a Red Rim. The black makes it want to open for more light and then it doesn't know what to do with the red. So here's pre and post editing. I don't love it.

I really didn't like what I was seeing on the back of my camera while in the field. So I desparately switched to C1 mode. I don't know what is stored in that setting but it actually gave me a pretty realsitic color. How about that!

Up front there were both Florida and Giant Whites.

Julias have been hard to come by this fall.

I walked the ditch a couple of times hoping for the Malicious (Northern Faceted) Skipper but had to settle for a Potrillo (Caballo) Skipper.

It was a really good December day with 61 species. Usually we've had some cold weather by now and species totals are much lower. A cool front comes in today. But it's only supposed to drop into the 50's. Full steam ahead!

Pipevine Swallowtail 1

Ruby-spotted Swallowtail 2
Florida White 1
Checkered White 2
Giant White 1
Orange Sulphur 1
Southern Dogface 3
Cloudless Sulphur 1
Large Orange Sulphur 8
Lyside Sulphur 6
Tailed Orange 2
Little Yellow 6
Marius Hairstreak 1
Gray Hairstreak 1
Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak 3
Dusky-blue Groundstreak 3
Western Pygmy-Blue 1
Ceraunus Blue 6
Reakirt's Blue 2
Fatal Metalmark 2
Red-bordered Pixie 6
American Snout 20
Gulf Fritillary 6
Julia Heliconian 1
Zebra Heliconian 3
Mexican Fritillary 8
Bordered Patch 4
Texan Crescent 3
Pale-banded Crescent 2
Vesta Crescent 1
Phaon Crescent 12
American Lady 1
Red Admiral 10
Common Buckeye 1
White Peacock 3
Malachite 1
Band-celled Sister 1
Mexican Bluewing 2
Common Mestra 1
Red Rim 2
Tropical Leafwing 8
Empress Leilia 5
Tawny Emperor 8
Monarch 5
Queen 40
Soldier 2
White-striped Longtail 2
Brown Longtail 3
Potrillo Skipper 1
White Checkered-Skipper 8
Tropical Checkered-Skipper 8
Laviana White-Skipper 8
Clouded Skipper 10
Southern Skipperling 2
Fiery Skipper 8
Whirlabout 2
Sachem 1
Common Mellana 1
Eufala Skipper 6
Purple-washed Skipper 1
Mexican Crescent 1

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Turquoise Longtail at NBC, 11/29/25

Friday morning sharp eyed Ryan Rodriguez got a brief look at a rare Turquoise Longtail in the Mexican orchid by the nursery. Thoughout the day hopeful butterfly watchers kept a vigil and eventually the Urbanus made another appearance. Several people got diagnostic photos but I arrived too late. I was taking a day off ahead of the warm windy Saturday that was forecast ahead of a incoming cold front. It cost me a lifer.

So my plan was to spend Saturday looking for good stuff blown in on the southerly wind. But before I could leave, the Discord sounded. The Turquoise Longtail was back! I raced over and got lucky this time.

This proved to be a fantastic day of very uncommon butterflies. In the immediate area of the orchid tree Curve-winged Metalmark, Caballo (formerly Poterillo) Skipper and Giant and Great Southern Whites were reported. Here's the metalmark.

Red-bordered pixies continue in large numbers.

Checking the nearby Coma tree, I spied a Marine Blue which put the NBC November list at an all time high of 139.

Then I decided to break from the crowd and run the bait logs. Not much exciting. So I decided to walk the ditch and found what I had hoped for... Malicious Skipper! Well, I guess it's not called that anymore. Synapte malitiosa as been split with the Caribbean nominate race retaining the old common moniker. Ours is the Northern Faceted Skipper, Synapte pecta. It's only the third I've ever seen, all self found. I put it out on the alert but no one else was able to refind it.

Farther north on the bait logs I foud a couple of female Pavon Emperor's.

And then in the sunken garden Ken Wilson found me a male.

Good to see a couple of Fawn-spotted Skippers. They were wiped out in the 2021 freeze.

Back to the south a Mazan's Scallopwing was reported in the little Gregg's Mistflower patch where the Red-spotted Patch was found a few days earlier.

Perusing the mistflowers I dug out an uncommon Erichson's White-skipper.

Back at the orchid tree, another Ruby-spotted Swallowtail put on a show.

Someone put a rare Spot-celled Sister on the Discord alert. Was it misidentified? All I found was a less rare female Silver Empror.

An uncommon Glazed Pellicia was on the blue Duranta.

A little later there was another report of a Spot-celled Sister. I ran over expecting to see the female Silver Emperor but no, it was a beautiful Spot-celled Sister. These used to be mega rare but we've had several this fall.