icosahedron's Favorites

The soft, white, flightless female tussock moth emerges from her cocoon. Releasing powerful pheromones the female makes the males aware of her presence. Outside, I scarcely open the cage when a mad fluttering begins. Two male moths swooped in so quickly that I only saw one enter the cage. The mating flurry made it hard to see what was going on. When the males stopped, the female remained between them. Eventually, one male flew off and the other remained seemingly injured at the bottom of the cage. The female now set to work separating the now fertilized eggs from her body adding her own tissues to the egg mass. Once her work was done, she too dropped to the bottom of the cage with some eggs still remaining attached to her body. I had no idea what I was in for when I put the tussock caterpillar in my cage.

As far as I can tell this is the earliest Western Pine Elfin found in Mendocino County. Checking BAMONA the previous early date was 3/11/2018. This is only three days later then the reported earliest record for California of 2/14/2015 in Sonoma County as reported by the The International Lepidoptera Survey’s “Flight Periods of California Butterflies” (2016).

Two photos show the same individual . One image shows the pale blue dorsal forewing color of a male; the other shows the grayish-brown dorsal hindwing color and orange aurora of a female. Ground color on the ventral wings is the pure creamy white of a female while the ventral forewing black spots are smaller and more rounded, characteristic of a male.

This was the find of the day for us. John and Kendra Abbott and I were driving slowly along a forest road in the SE corner of Oklahoma in the Ouachita National Forest when we saw a large blue and black butterfly nectaring on some sunflowers a short way off the road. It was a huge butterfly and I thought at first it was a large female Tiger Swallowtail, but when we got the vehicle stopped we saw it was not a swallowtail and realized it was a female Diana Fritillary! We only had it in view a few moments before it took off back into the forest, but we obtained a few shots. I had seen a couple of males at a distance in Arkansas last year but was not able to take any shots, so this was the first time I've ever photographed the species. A very exciting record for us of this very local and often hard to find butterfly. I'll post 4 shots.

Feeding on Vinegar Weed.

Hello @icosahedron, maybe you remember our conversation about Woodland Skippers feeding on Vinegar weed, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/29931863. You had quoted Shapiro, “this species is the only Skipper to nectar on that interesting flower." Lo and behold, I found another Skipper species feeding on Vinegar Weed, a Fiery Skipper. There are always exceptions to “rules,” I guess. It’s nature after all. I thought you would get a kick out of this. Hope all is well!