Daily Butterfly Pictures #87

I couldn't get this one to open his wings for me..I stood there forever LOL..

BTW..does going to a Butterfly Garden qualify as "seeing a butterfly"? I just found out that there's one in Ames, so I'm thinking of going either tomorrow or Monday

Last pic for the night..not a BF, but I loved how the sun made him shine :)


good night everyone!



edited to fix my grammar.. good grief lol

This message was edited Jul 2, 2011 8:08 PM

nice pics! Love the dragon fly.

Russell

Christine, the little one is one of the many skippers and the second one is a Comma or Question Mark....I know just enough to confuse you! LOL!

Great pics! I always have my camera in my pocket, but the one time I didn't I saw a great butterfly. Of course by the time I grabbed my camera, it had flitted away. It looked like a Gulf Fritterary only about twice the size. It was drinking where I was running my soaker hose and I startled it.

Hate when that happens!

Chris, I'm going to disagree with Sheila on the skipper. If you zoom in and look closely, you can see the "tails". I'm guessing this is a female eastern tailed-blue. It was likely very tiny.

The other one is a Question Mark. you can *just* see the "eyebrow" above the dot. I know you don't know what I'm talking about, so I've posted a pix. The arrow points to the "eyebrow", or has mark above the three dots. On a Comma, this mark is missing.

Monitored today. HUGE Regal and Aphrodite Fritillary numbers but everything else seems down.

Did see a few of these Common Woodnymphs

And the only other interesting photo, I interrupted this romantic interlude of Common Buckeye.

Oooh Marna...good catch, on the eastern tailed-blue. I haven't seen that one and didn't look close enough..my bad. I am learning more each day on here, like the id on the QM, didn't know to look for that!
LOve Love your buckeyes! I don't see them often enough and never mating pair. I have their host plants out the wazoo but they grow wild here in the fields too.

Nice photos of the butterflies, Marna.

Eastern Tailed-Blue? I remember we've had many of them last year. Not this year. I haven't seen one here yet. That makes me blue. :(

Thanks Sheila. I love the buckeyes. I always forget how small they really are. With those big eye spots I always think of them as a larger butterfly! I was lucky with these two, they were low in the grass and I just walked upon them and flushed them quite by accident. As far as the QM goes, I know that either Cat or Melanie was always saying something about how you could ID them from the top, but I never got it until I started monitoring and they covered it in a workshop. And at first glance, that blue did look fuzzy/skipperish. But I saw those dots right away so zoomed in. Sneaky blue!!

Lily, I don't start seeing the blues until later in August. But clearly if Chris saw one, they are in the area.

I released four BST today.....a few pics here.

This one needed a bit more time to allow it's wings to harden, but I needed to go on some errands.

Put her on the fennel to hang for a while.

Also released a queen yesterday! Only cat I have seen on the milkweed. Darn lizards.

Congratulation Sheila. Those babies are so very pretty. So bad about the lizards.

yay!!!

I've found a tiny Gray Hairstreak this morning. I do mean it's tiny. Ummm, I thought they were big last year? About 1.5 the size of this little one. I maybe imagining things? lol

Lizards eat the eggs or what? We have little lizards that scamper around here.

I saw either a BST of a Pipevine flying around yesterday. I usually have tons of both, but they are few and far between this year. They would covery my mimosa trees.

Oh Boy..... only 97* here today. Was 105* yesterday. But the humidity .... UGH!!!!!

Happy 4th everyone! Stay safe!

Hey all Florida butterfly gardeners please take a look at this link. If you did not know about them take a look. http://www.arnoldsbutterflyhaven.com/ They are having the next NABA count this Sunday at 9am.

wine, cheese AND butterflies? Torture to be so far north!

Guess we are too late for the wine....

This message was edited Jul 4, 2011 4:46 PM

Thank you for all the kind comments and for the help on the IDing.. I'm learning so much from this thread! I actually had 3 of my grandsons here overnight yesterday and was showing them the pics here with the names.. 1 (13yo) was fascinated, 1 (12yo) was interested and the last one (11yo) put up with it LOL.. I figure 2 out of 3 isn't too bad :) They want to go with me to the butterfly house and post pics on here, so I'll probably do that with them next weekend. The older 2 are definitely getting the photography bug from me..I may have to get them a decent digital camera for Christmas.

I was pretty impressed with the boys, Sheila- I showed them your queen and said- that's a Monarch and they both said "Monarchs don't have the white spots". I told them that is probably how you knew it was a queen :) I think I'll go to the local library and get a book or two on butterflies to have here when they come next time. Plus I can increase my knowledge before then lol

Marna, thank you for the pic of the Question Mark.. you're right, I wouldn't have gotten it without that pic :)

I do have a pic that I took a couple of days ago- am I right that it's a Meadow Frit?

And what's the difference between it and the Varigated Frit? I was looking at the pics that Marna and Bob posted on this thread.

Thanks :)

Here is a great site to help them see the difference. I find it very helpful when I take time to use it!
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabambc/common-comparisons.asp

Don't feel too bad guys I missed the wine also. Then I'm not much of a wine drinker. But, I would have made the sacrifice for the cause.

Chris.....isn't it neat when you can get them interested!! My 13 yr. old GD is starting to lose interest in stuff like this as she becomes a full fledged teenager! But my 11 yr.old GD is still wanting to learn. But she really likes science & math too!

I actually had a Cabbage White out front over the weekend...but missed getting a photo!

I had this bf on the patio yesterday. I wasn't sure what it was as the wings weren't open. I have 2 pics.

2nd pic

I am thinking tawny emperor, but the pics are clear enought to definatively id. Not me anyway.

It was on the ceiling of my covering, and my little pocket camera wouldn't zoom in very close. I even edited it and enlarged it, but that was the best I could get.

Thanks Sheila. I'm thrilled to see ANY butterfly. They are so few and far between this year.

I saw a Gulf Frit depositing eggs on my passiflora today. I would guess she stopped 15-20 times, so I should be seeing some cats soon. That is the first one I have seen this summer, so hopefully they are on the rebound. Sorry, no pics!

Russell

Thank you Sheila..that did help - I think I was right that it's a Meadow Frit in my pic. Now I'll go back to Marna and Bob's pics and see if I can spot those same differences LOL..


Edited because I got my answer backwards ^_^

This message was edited Jul 5, 2011 2:38 PM

The insects must of had their fairmones working today. ^_^ I saw a pair of dragon flies and a pair of horse flies mating while I was working the garden today.

LOL! Crit....

Glad it helped Chris.

Yea!!! Yakmon....looking up here too. I saw a GF earlier this week, a BST today, and took pics of a Silver-spotted skipper. The BST could be one of those I released this week, let two more out this morning.

Oh Chris, yesterday I wrote a whole long fritillary post and then my application quit. D'oh. So I'll try to recreate my brilliance here. ha.

First of all, you might want to get a good guidebook. I like Kaufmann's north american guide. It has description on the left side of the page, and the pictures on the right. you'll start learning more and more with every sighting.

So, the meadow fritillary is much smaller than an aphrodite or variegated frit. You are more likely to confuse the MF with other checkerspots. The variegated frit has a much different look on both upper and lower sides than the Aphrodite. while open, the Aphrodite more closely resembles the Great Spangled. But the GS is a bit bigger, I believe and it has the narrow band of color (see that link sheila posted) on the under wing. There are other differences, but those are the more obvious. So… I think that picture is an Aphrodite Frit.

And for Crit, I think I'd go Hackberry Emperor on that one because of the spots on the upper wing. Tawny appears to have only some marbling.

Released this one sunday

BCH.... too early in the morning??? lol Think you forgot the pic. ^_^