Two butterflies

Two butterflies on the butterfly bushes.

A female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

A Great Spangled Fritillary. In the west, males and females are quite different, and neither look quite like this, but in the East you can't tell them apart by looking (unless, I suppose, you are also a Great Spangled Fritillary). Note how different the inner- and outer-wing patterns are; note, too, the tiny forelegs making the butterfly look four-legged. Both of those are characteristic of Brush-footed butterflies, which fritilaries are among.

Walnut Caterpillar moth

Found this guy sheltering under a planter on my patio today.

It's an Imperforate Datana Walnut Caterpillar moth, Datana integerrima. Despite their name, the caterpillars also eat the leaves of victories, pecans, and oaks; this one most likely the latter around here. Handsome guy, no?

Riverside butterfly

It's a great spangled fritillary, probably a male.

Butterfly

We see butterflies passing through the yard but don't get many pausing - I hope the hyacinth, coneflowers, and butterfly bushes we just planted this summer will change that. Here are two for you, though. It's the same kind - a purple-spotted red - but the third picture is probably not the same actual one.

A few more flutterbys

Almost the last week I'll be at the College Park office. Here are a few butterflies and skippers, including one I've never seen (or at least not to know) before: an American snout - the source of the name is obvious!





Next, a Pearl crescent


And two Tiger swallowtails, one much the worse for wear



A slightly tattered Painted Lady

A Common buckeye

And three skippers, one largish (for skippers) Silverspotted



A sachem



And a Peck's skipper

Painted Lady

Vanessa cardui, the lovely Painted Lady butterfly, one of the world's most common. It's a brushfoot, or four-footed butterfly - see how the first pair of legs is so reduced as to be unnoticeable.

Late August wingéd insects

Dragontlies, ants, skippers and butterflies.
First, three dragonflies - different species. I don't know anything about them! (I did find two - the first is a Halloween pennant and the second a common Whitetail. I still don't know the third...)








Ants preparing to fly. Check out the sexual dimorphism - the queens are huge compared to the males.

Some skippers

Here are three little sachems, a kind of grass skipper. First, two of the drabber females, and then a brilliantly colored male:








Female Horace's duskywing, one of the larger skippers



Some tiger swallowtails - first a handsome male (notice the lack of blue on the hindwing)



And females





A buckeye



A monarch



And a painted lady

Some butterflies

Butterflies and skippers (not true butterflies) from around work the last couple of weeks. There haven't been many this year - I've only seen one buckeye, and no monarchs.

First up, a silver-spotted skipper, one of the largest of the skippers, and very easily recognizable.

And this little skipper is a female zabulon, one I've never noticed before

This skipper is probably a female sachem, but I'm not sure

This skipper is either a cobweb or possibly a sachem, I'm not sure

A red admiral

This is a male clouded sulphur

And finally, two female tiger swallowtails, one yellow and one black, and both gorgeous.

Wildlife in the Smokies

When I was a kid, you couldn't go to the mountains without seeing bears. They were all over the road, begging for food. But they got to feeling entitled, and became dangerous, and the rangers had to ... discourage them. It wasn't easy, and it resulted in more than a few bears having to be killed, but it worked. Now bears are certainly around, but they aren't seen very often, and we didn't see any. Nor did we see any of the elk over on the North Carolina side, nor the eastern coyotes. But we did see deer!

These guys were grazing at the John Oliver place, unperturbed by the people walking on the path to and from the house. But some guy just had to walk out close to them, so they took off into the woods before we got up even with them. (What part of "do not approach or disturb the wildlife" didn't he understand, I wonder... and good thing for him it wasn't a bear.)



Another deer



Some butterflies: a buckeye, a swallowtail, a crescent, two crescents- one very raggedy, and some little blues



I believe this to be an Appalachian swallowtail rather than an Eastern tiger. Cool to see one - it's a new species, developed through hybridization of the Eastern and the Canadian.









And some birds: a crow, a sparrow, and a thrasher







And a parent sparrow with its baby among the graves