A much belated posting due to many factors but it’s here at last. What’s not to like about spending a week in the best area of the lower 48 for butterflies? That’s what Barry Marts and I did between Oct 31st and Nov 7th. Some expected species were in short supply while other more typically rare species were being seen. That’s the way it goes right? You play the cards you’re dealt. Mix in a great company (other lepsters from Maryland; Rick Borchelt, Tom Stock and Jim Brighton to name a few) were also down in the area at the same time) and some birds and you have the perfect recipe to go into saturation overload.. The only negatives for the whole trip were darkness and having to sleep.
We spent the entire week in the lower valley visting (east to west) Boca Chica (part of the Rio Grande Valley NWR), Resaca de le Palma SP, Estero Llano Grande SP, Santa Anna NWR, NABA National Butterfly center, Bentsen SP and Falcon SP. We missed a few excellent finds like the first U.S. record of Shadowed Hairstreak (Tom and Rick got to see this) at Hugh Ramsey Park and a Frosted Flasher at Santa Anna NWR. But, when all was said and done Barry and I counted 2,554 individuals of 104 species. Barry noted 80 lifers! and I saw 17. A PDF of where we had our first sightings: First Sightings TX Nov 2015. The photos presented below are mostly of new ones I saw on this trip. If you’d like to see other photos from previous trips check: South Texas 2014. Our top 5 species from a numbers perspective were Queen (412), Laviana White-Skipper (216), Fiery Skipper (151), Sickle-winged Skipper (116) and Tropical Checkered-Skipper (113). We plan on returning this November. We hope that some of you can join us. You won’t regret it!
Of course bird watching was tied into the trip and we had some notables like a Northern Jacana at Estero Llano SP and others shown here:
Click on image to enlarge…
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On a personal note the following were lifers for me:
Giant White Curve-winged Metalmark Mexican Fritillary Crimson Patch Pale-banded Crescent Silver Emperor South Texas Satyr Guava Skipper Coyote Cloudywing Brown-banded Skipper Turk's-cap White-Skipper Saltbush Sootywing Pale-rayed Skipper Double-dotted Skipper Purple-washed Skipper Evans' Skipper Violet-banded Skipper
Barry provided the photo of the South Texas Satyr, a recently described species:
South Texas Satyr
Click on image to enlarge…
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What an amazing array of butterflies….thanks so much Matt!