Just Can't Get Enough of the Butterflies

With the swallowtails and other large, colorful butterflies, it is easy to overlook the small butterflies, especially the skippers.  Here are a few little butterflies that are found around here.

Western Pygmy Blue

This is a Western Pygmy Blue (Brephidium exilis) drinking nectar from a hairyseed bahia flower in the alley behind our house.  The Western Pygmy Blue is the smallest butterfly in North America (actual size ½ to ¾ in.), but around here you can see literally thousands of them swarming the four-wing saltbush plants that their larvae use as food and that grow wild in our area.  Unfortunately, the city loves to spray the four-winged saltbush (and everything else that grows wild) with Roundup, as part of an ill-conceived “weed eradication program.”  For some reason, the Roundup trucks keep missing the hairyseed bahia plants that this butterfly was drinking from.  This is truly fortunate, because they must spray thousands of gallons of Roundup in our neighborhood alone, even though it has now been classified as a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Association.

Bronze Roadside-Skipper

The Bronze Roadside-Skipper (Amblyscirtes aenus) looks very plain until seen close up.  I love the bronze color of its wings, and the fuzzy white head with a black “Mohawk.”  This one was very friendly and posed for me on an apple tree before eventually flying off to find nectar.

Fiery Skipper

This Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus) wasn’t interested in posing at all.  It was hiding in a clump of rosemary.  These tiny Skippers are often found on lawns, as they lay their eggs on common lawn grasses like Bermuda, crabgrass, and St. Augustine. 

A Few More Butterflies

Here are a few more of the butterflies that we see around here.  It’s hot right now, but the butterflies like it.  The butterflies remind me of the years we have lived in this house, but most especially of the time when we moved here.  It was a difficult year for a number of reasons, and I began to learn about the butterflies that lived here in such great numbers, partially as a distraction from all of our problems.  I was especially amazed at the number of Giant Swallowtails that were attracted by the orange trees, and the various Black Swallowtails that were attracted by the parsley and rue.

     Some of the butterflies, like the Sleepy Orange (Abaeis nicippe), were already known to me.  The Sleepy Oranges fly in mating pairs and are very shy and hyper.  I don’t know where the “sleepy” in their name comes from! 

female Sleepy Orange

male Sleepy Orange

male Sleepy Orange (upper side of wings)

Sulfurs are also common around here.  Here is a male Lyside Sulfur (Kricogonia lyside).  They are also shy and hard to photograph.  I was chasing this one all over the place.

Lyside Sulfur

Lyside Sulfur (a little closer up)

And finally, the Fritillaries.  They are beautiful in a classical butterfly sense, with their golden and orange and black colors.  There are several different Fritillaries that come around, but the Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta Claudia) is the most common.

Variegated Fritillary (top of wing)

Variegated Fritillary (underwing)

The Moth and the Butterfly

Okay, one more butterfly post.

This is a gorgeous specimen of a Vine Sphinx moth (Eumorpha vitis).  It is about 3 1/2 inches in diameter.  These moths love a variety of flowers, including those of the trumpet vines that have slowly taken over our yard.  This Sphinx had recently emerged from pupating in an underground burrow below a stand of trumpet vine and was still getting its sea legs when I photographed him (after posing him on a pomegranate bush).  I put him back in a secluded spot under heavy foliage so he could finish adjusting to the outside world, and he eventually flew off to find his own spot where he could wait for evening and a new life as a fully-mature moth.

Vine Sphinx moth

Vine Sphinx moth (a little closer up)

Here is a female Checkered White (Pontia protodice), also known as the Common White and the Southern Cabbage Moth.  She is a butterfly, however, and not a moth.  Several species of Whites are called Cabbage Moths, which is made even more confusing by the fact that there is also a true moth called the Cabbage Moth.  The upper side of the female checkered white has this lovely light brown pattern, though the underwing is mostly white with just a little bit of light brown marking.

female Checkered White

female Checkered White

More Butterflies

The summer heat arrived this week, and with it an explosion of butterflies (being cold-blooded, they tend to like the heat).  Fritillaries, Sulfurs, Swallowtails of every stripe (literally), Western Pygmy-Blues, and Cabbage Moths (which are actually butterflies, not moths). This Buckeye (Junonia coenia) was sitting on the grass looking a little ragged, and I thought it was in distress or drinking beads of water.  But actually, it turns out that Buckeye males like to sit on the ground and wait for females.  It’s their favorite “dating spot.”  I saw another one sitting on the grass later.

Buckeye male

Here is a rather busy photo of an American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis). These butterflies are very common around here, along with their close relative, the Painted Lady, and can be distinguished by the “cobweb” design and blue "eyespots" (which for some reason look black in this photo) found on the undersides of the lower wings.  This one is drinking from a chaste berry (vitex) flower.

American Lady

This is either a Red-Lined Scrub-Hairstreak (Strymon bebrycia) or a Grey-Hairstreak (Strymon melinus), also drinking from a chaste berry flower.  Unfortunately, another flower is hiding the hilarious “second head,” that is a distinguishing characteristic of the Hairstreaks.  They have thread-like tails which they vibrate to imitate antennas, and the spots at the base of the wings look like eyes.  This is probably intended to confuse birds who might try to strike for their heads when attempting to catch them as prey, only to find that the "head" is just the corner of a wing. This butterfly is actually quite small, with a wingspan of about an inch.

Red-Lined Scrub-Hairstreak or Grey-Hairstreak

Swallowtails

Here are pictures of some of the swallowtails that we see in our garden.  The Giant Swallowtail (Heraclides cresphontes) is by far the most common.  This is because it is attracted by our orange trees and rue, which its larvae feed on.  They really love the orange leaves, and often get caught on a porch that opens up by a big orange tree.  When this happens, we have to help them by gently removing them back outdoors.  Here is one on the porch screen.  There were actually two of them in the porch today.  Because of their love of orange (and other citrus) leaves, their larvae (that look like bird droppings) are often called “orange dogs.”  The larvae have these wacky red scent horns that come out when they are disturbed.  We are happy to share a few leaves with them.

Giant Swallowtail

The Eastern Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes), as well as other black swallowtails, like our parsley and rue for laying their eggs.  Their larvae prefer parsley, and plants in the parsley family, but if there isn’t enough parsley they will settle for rue.  This one is on a lantana.  All of the butterflies drink from the lantanas, as well as flowers like those on our chaste berry tree, and buddleias, bee balm and verbena.  Many of the smaller (non-swallowtail) butterflies prefer daisies, sunflowers, and catnip and mint blossoms.  This Eastern Black Swallowtail is a female, which you can tell from the row of yellow spots on her wings.

Eastern Black Swallowtail

Eastern Black Swallowtail drinking nectar

This is a Two-Tailed Tiger Swallowtail (Pterourus multicaudatus).  The Latin name makes it sound like it should be a dinosaur or something.  It is sitting on an orange tree, but I don’t think it lays its eggs there.  I may have seen one of its larvae on a lilac (though it could have been the larva of another swallowtail).  In this photo it is easy to see the two “tails” at the end of each of its wings.

Two-Tailed Tiger Swallowtail