I actually managed to get a few decent shots of BFs in my garden.
Grey hairstreak
Chasing butterflies
Not sure what this lil guy/gal is. Everything I thought it is,doesn't match.
Would have been a great picture had it been sharper.
I know it's one of the skippers but there's so many of them in my book,it boggles the mind.
The skippers are mind boggling, but I think the picture prior is a Painted Lady.
Thanks for the id. Here's a buckeye.
Good shots bigred.
I discovered the telescoping button does much better than close up feature on my camera
I have discovered a different operator works well too!
Actually the second butterfly is an American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis). There is a small white dot on the forewing orange cell that is an easy way to distinguish it from the Painted Lady when viewing the topside. Also the hindwind eyespots are usually a tad bigger. Not sure if your location gets the West Coast Lady which is also very similar, has no forewing white spot and the hindwing eye spots are bigger, blue in color and surrounded by black. The hindwings are also orange with very little white or variation in color.
American Lady
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabast/americanlady.html
Painted Lady
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabast/paintedlady.html
West Coast Lady
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabast/westcoast.html
As for the skipper - you are so rigtht! There are so many and they all look the same :o)
Good going on the Common Buckeye - those are lovely butterflies!
As for us down in the south tip of Texas - very few butterflies in sight. The heavy rains and winds from Alex either knocked them to the ground or made them seek shelter. Yesterday evening around 7pm I was outside checking the yard and a Giant Swallowtail flew out from my front porch vestibule. At least that one was smart enough to seek safety in an area surrounded by three brick walls :o)
Hopefully the weather will clear up and we'll start seeing more of them soon enough.
~ Cat
This message was edited Jul 2, 2010 8:00 AM
I'm seeing lots of butterflies...very few cats
But if you plant it they will come! A great host plant list is under the "butterfly garden" link on the left of this site. You may already have more host plants than you think you do...take a look.
www.dallasbutterflies.com
Oh I have this yard planted for the BF...I'm just not real good at finding the cats. I did find cats on the spicebush earlier in the spring but they've moved on to the next stage somewhere else. Paw-paw being munched,but nothing munching the parsley,fennel,rue or hops this year. Little bit of munching on the pipevine...nothing on the milkweeds.
Great....I figured if you had a lot of bfs you must have planted the host plants.
Sheila i don't live too far from where Bigred is and go thru there fairly often i can tell you that there is more host plants just growing wild than anyone could ever hope to duplicate ,sure good to see people on this site that I regularly see in Texas gardening and the conflower forum lots of fun
That is great to know the wildflowers and host plants are doing well up there. I was in extreme NE TX yesterday and noticed the numerous milkweed plants along the highway. Hopefully they will still be growing when the Monarchs come down in the fall.
It is always good to see familar names in the forums. Sometimes I just lurk on others, but usually post in the TX and HBird & BF forums.