After 6 months, the weather is finally perfect for me to go to the park to take pictures of butterflies. And I manged to take a picture of these two gossamer-winged butterflies. Boy I sure missed doing this.
1st image: Ceraunus blue
2nd image: Gray Hairstreak
With everybody talking about Bogong moths, I thought I share this post I saw on facebook .
Due to it being on the ceiling, this is how far I can zoom on it without it being blurry. Also I am sufferinf tom eye allergies so I cannot look at it for too long.
Southeast Texas
- Scientific name: Colias eurytheme
- Also know as Alfalfa butterfly
- Description: The male is orange above with soild black borders. A black spot ornaments the forewing cell; a red spot, the hindwing. The wings beneath are more greenish yellow, the hindwing containing a silver pink-edged spot, usually with another smaller satellite spot beside it. Females are dimorphic. The orange form is similar to the male, but with the black borders containing orange spots. A white form has greenish white wings with the same pattern. Seasonal forms also exist. Those emerging short photoperipds in early spring are smaller and lighter and have narrower dark borders. They may, in fact, look much like the clouded sulphur, Colias philodice, which has yellow wings. Normally all forms of the orange sulphur have some orange shading, but hybrids also occur, and the situation can be cofusing. That complication, however, is not a problem in eastern or southern Texas because the clouded sulphur is not normally found in those areas.
- Size: 1.5 - 2.5 inches.
- Range: The orange sulphur is one of the most widely distributed and most abundant species in North America. Although rare east of the Appalachians before 1890, it has colonized virtually all of the East Coast and now occurs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Central Mexico.
- The orange sulphur inhabits open fields, marshes and roadsides.
- Multiply brooded, the orange sulphur appears almost continuosly from March to November or December and nectars at a succession of flowers through the year.
- The orange sulphur lays its eggs on a variety of plants in the pea family, Fabaceae. Alfalfa is a favorite, but whie sweet-clover, white clover, and vetches also prove popular.
- The butterflies are strong fliers that cover long distances, and they readily colonize new areas with cultivated legume crops, at times becoming an agricultural pest.
- The caterpillars are bright green with a white line along each side, the stripes bordered below with black.
- The breeding biology ubiquitous orange sulphur has been studied extensively, and Scott provides a summary of the intricate system. Nitrogeon that goes into the orange pigment of the normally colored female is instead used by the white female to produce more stored fat and larger eggs that lead to faster development. Males aparently prefer orange females for mating, but the white ones produce new broods more rapidly. They have a reproductive advantage in northern populations where the season is short, and they are more plentiful there than in the South, where the orange form dominates.
- Ultraviolet reflectance also plays an important part in courtship and mating of the orange sulphur, since butterfly eyes are sensitive to those wavelentghs. Only the male reflects UV light from the upper surface of the wings, and the female must see that UV pattern to accept her mate. The male, on the other hand, is attracted to the greenish yellow color on underside of the wings and is repelled by ultraviolet reflection. In addition, the male produces a pheromone that induces the female to take a mating position. Even when the visible wing color of the male was changed in laboratory experiments, he remained acceptable to the female as long as the UV reflectance pattern was preserved.
- The male clouded sulphur does not reflect ulraviolet, a factor that would normally prohibit interbreeding with a female orange sulphur. Experiments show, however, that females less than an hour old cannot distinguish betwwen the two. Thus most hybrids of this type occur with newly emerged females. The process usually produces sterile female offspring.
- The is a smaller barrier to interbreeding between a male orange sulphur and a female clouded sulphur. The male chooses his mate by color of the underwings alone, and the female does not dostinguish the difference in the male's UV pattern. This type of hybridization takes place often where both species occur, and the sex ratio of the resulting offspring is normal. Because the hybrid female tends to mate with a male orange sulhur, and because the genes governing color and UV reflectance are all on the male's X chromosome, those chromosomes do not ordibarily end up in the other species.The two species, the orange and clouded sulphurs, thus remain distinct despite hybridation.
I did mothing tonight at my mom and her husbands property and the only moths that show up are grass veener moths and micro moths. The other big moths are at that light other. My moms husband is going to call someone to turn that light off. Once they do, I'll try mothing again. Also the geometer moth is the one I took earlier.
If this moth have some money, what do you think it will order at Sonic?
I this moth have some money, what would it order from Sonic?
The buds still have not open yet and I noticed more leaves have sprouted which means it wents back to focusing on producing leaves. However, the buds do look more red which mames it's tropical not swamp (and I was sure my intuition was right that is swamp milkweed. I guess there are still more things about milkweed I not yet learn about) Luckily my aunt are having people over sometime this month to get rid of the weeds in the flower bed and she is gonna try to ask them to gently move the snails that are living under the leaves of the plant to somewhere else and have them cut the milkweed back.
- Scientific name: Pyrgus oileus
- Also known as Blue-gray skipper
- Description: The male tropical checkered skipper is dark gray above with white spots. An extensive mat of blue-gray hairs covers the bases of the wings. The female is usually darker, with long hairs confined primarily to a small area of the hindwing. Both sexes have a strong infusion of nrown on the hindwing beneath, thus producing less contrast between the pale ground color and the darker bands of spots.
- Size: 1-1.375
- Range: As its name suggests, the tropical checkered skipper occurs only along the extreme southern edge of the United States. It ranges from Florida around the Gulf of Mexico to southeastern and southern Texas, then south through the West Indies and mainland tropical America to Argentina. A few individuals stray northward from the Gulf Coast into the southern states.
- The tropical checkered.skipper looks so much alike the Common Checkered Skipper (P. Communis) and without capturing the butterflies or examining them closely, it is difficult to distinguish between the two. However, there distinguishing features that listed by most authors to help the distinguish the two species: The white spots along the edge of the hindwing anove are larger in P. oileus than they are in P. communis. In the former, these mariginal spots are almost as large as those in the inner, sunmarginal row. The tropical checkered skipper has three dark blotches along the leading edge of the hindwing below; these marks are not present on the common checkered skipper.
- The habits of the tropical checkered skipper are predumably much like those of the better-known communis. It frequents brushy fields, roadsides, woodland clearings, and yards and gardenss, where the larvae feed on a variety of mallows. The caterpillars utilize arrowleaf sida, also called axocatzin, webbing together leaves to build shelters.
- The larvae are green and had a black head with faint dorsal line covered with small white tubetcles.
- Season: March-November; several broods.
This is a Carpet-grass webworm moth I found outside of my apartment this morning and it was resting a bowing position. Why do they rest like that.
Since tropical and swamp milkweed look similar, I am waiting for the flower buds on my grandmothers milkweed to open so that if the flowers are red, I'll cut it back down and if the flowers are pink I'll leave it be. But it's been three to four days and the flowers still have not open. It has been cloudy and rainy in my area recently so I don't know the flower buds are waiting for the weather to be sunny again or the plant have shift its focus away from blooming and went back to prioritize vegetative growth (leaves and stems) and root maintenance again. Do any of ya know when the buds are gonna open or is the cloudy and rainy weather is making the buds delay from opening?
On another note, I have garden snails living on the stems and under the leaves of the milkweed. I leave them alone since the monarch caterpillars never seem to be bothered by them, they keep the plant healthy and clean by eating the dead the dead leaves and fungi, and the presence of them adds visual diversity to the plant, making it harder for predatory wasps and birds to easily spot and target young monarch larvae. But if the flowers turned out to be red were I do need to cut the milkweed back, how do I safely remove them from the plant and where in the flowerbed can I move them to?
For those who don't know, there is a wildfire in Ross county, Texas that have burned 90,400 acres of land destroying the vital nectar-riched plants that the Monarchs will need to fuel up on their way south. Even though it won't impact their migration,they are still gonna need your help. You can help them by planting nectar-riched flowers such as fall aster, goldenrods,and salvia's. Also planting trees and shrubs for them to rest on will help them too.
Last year before my grandmother moved to a retirement home, she had a tropical milkweed that grew very tall and leaning towards the sun due to it being in partial shade but did not had any caterpillars. When we had a cold snap last december, it became brown and died.
But two moths ago when my mom and her husband moved to her apartment, I noticed another milkweed had grown in the the spot where it had been with 6 healthy 5th instar caterpillars on it amd that's the thing confuses me.
Here in southeast, Texas, tropical milkweed blooms all yaer round despite extreme heat and this milkweed isn't blooming all nor leaning towards the sun. Now thanks to TS Eduard bringing the rain back, the temperatures have gotten a little cooler and the milkweed has started producing buds and it looks much happier and that does not seem like a normal behavior for tropical since they love the heat.
Thank you for the answers on my last post. We'll see the real answer on what species it is when it blooms in a few days.
My aunt found this beautiful dead swallowtail on the street. So I bury it in the soil so it can rest in peace and so its body can decompose and give nutrients to the plants
My grandmother's milkweed is about to bloom and I can tell it is not tropical as the buds are magenta or pink colored. So maybe it is a swamp milkweed?
- Scientific name: Calycopis cecrops
- Description: One of the prettiest of our small hairstreaks, the Red-banded hairstreak is dark gray-black or brownish black above with patches of deep, iridescent blue that flash in flight. The blue on the male is usually restricted to the hindwings near the tails; that of the female is more extensive and may extend onto the forewings. Beneath, the black-and-white line that crosses the gray-brown is widely bordered inwardly with red or red-orange. That broad band extends across both the hindwing and the forewing and gives the species its common name.
- Size: .75 - 1 inch.
- Range: The Red-banded hairstreak ranges across the southeastern corner of the U.S., feom Long Island to Missouri and Kansas and southward to Florida and Texas.
- Females lay their eggs on the underside of dead leaves near the base of approriate food plants, where the eggs and newly emerged larvae are hidden from view. The caterpillars later crawl up to feed on flowers and leaves. Sumacs, wax myrtle. Crotons, and oaks have all been listed as larval food plants, and Giffird and Opler successfully raised red-banded hairstreaks on borh sumac and wax myrtle.
- The authors, however, describe the caterpillar as "dull blackish brown" in all its instars, while Heitzman describe it as "yellowish green with a bluish green dorsal line and a heavy covering of brownish hairs. "
- It is possible that the larvae feed high in the trees out of sight and small larvae among the detritus on the ground can be almost impossible to see.
- Male butterflies perch on the leaves of trees and shrubs, waiting for passing females. They seem to be most active in late afternoon. Both sexes visit a variety of flowers for nectar and sip moisture from damp earth.
- There are apparently at least three broods, producing fresh adults from March into November.
- The larvae are slow to develop, and broods overlap through the year. Some larve may also hibernate before finishing their develpment.
A funny video on facebook I had to share. These two monarch caterpillars afe resting on the same leaf and end up arguing with each other because one them keeps getting to the other side. 😆
For those who don't know, yesterday I found this moth on the floor in front of my door unable to fly, parts of her atennas missing and an unfunctional leg. I soak the cotton ball with sugar water (she did not eat by the way), put her in my butterfly habitat and put her a dark spot in my bedroom and plnned to wait til evening to find a nice safe place to release her. However, I have found a safe place for her, she had already passed away. So I just put her on the ground so her body can decompose and left her.
I wished there was something I could have done to make her live longer and make her ably to fly again but there was nothing I could do. She was at the end of her life expectancy and it was time for her to go. I am very sad but happy to know she is not suffering anymore and is flying around with her moth friends in heaven.