Reakirt’s Blue (Echinargus isola) is a tiny butterfly with a wingspan of only 3/4 of an inch (19mm). This one distracted me while I was walking in the bosque this morning.
Category: butterflies
Eye-Eye Skipper
Common Checkered-Skipper on Purple Salvia.
Buckeye and the Painted Lady
What Does Silver See?
First Butterfly & Flowers
Mourning Cloaks are consistently the first butterflies to appear in March each year. While they prefer to feed on tree sap, oaks are a favorite, or rotting fruit, they have to make due with sucking nectar from the blossoms of our early blooming plum tree. The Mourning Cloak caterpillars like to feed on a variety of tree leaves including elms and cottonwoods, which we have plenty of. Adults that appear this early in the season have hibernated over the winter.
Pearl Crescents
Tiny Pearl Crescent butterflies enjoying our purple salvia.
I compelled to do a pesky green red car report since my MX-5 is averaging 42.5 mpg (18.07 kpl) after driving 320.3 miles (515.47 kilometers). That’s the best average gas mileage so far, which included a lot of stop and go traffic (all the public schools and universities are back in session), plus I drove to three different schools in different parts of town on this tank of gas.
Stormy Sunday
We had thunderstorms coming in from all directions this afternoon. The thunderstorm that built up over the Sandias was the most dramatic. While out on a walk before the storms, I encountered a little bit of wildlife.
Buckeye Butterfly
This video of the Great Purple Hairstreak Butterfly shows how it moves the flanges on the ends of its wings while it feeds. I assume it’s to fool predators into going after the flanges on its wings, giving it a chance to escape.
Blue Hairstreak
Silver kitty
Thunderstorm activity to the north.
Cosmos & Roses
Our cosmos have started to bloom, and the roses are putting on another round of blooms. The little white and green flowers in the second and third set of photos below are a wildflower that busts open like fireworks. It reminds me of dill, and the wasps and butterflies love it.
Clouded Colors
The echinaceas are attracting the various colors of clouded sulfur butterflies: green, orange, yellow.
Green Clouded Sulfur (Colias philodice)
I was able to get the orange sulfur (Colias eurytheme), also known as the “alfalfa butterfly”, above with it’s wings open as it landed on an enchinacea. Clouded Sulfurs rarely open their wings to a flattened position when they are perched. The solid black around the edges of the wings indicate that this one is a male (females have dots on the black edges).
Backlit orange.
A male Orange fluttering around an unfazed female Green (the green has spots on the black edges of her wings).
Yellow Sulfer (Colias croceus).
Colias philodice
The common name of this Colias philodice butterfly is Clouded Sulfur.
Off Center & Not Even 