Category: lepidopterans

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 22, 2024 • 8:15 am

This being Sunday, John Avise is here with some pictures, and remember that he’s moved on to butterflies. John’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

First, I’d like to wish all WEIT readers a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Joyous Coynezaa, or whatever else you may be celebrating during this special season.  This week continues the series on butterflies that I’ve photographed in North America.  I’m continuing to go down my list of species in alphabetical order by common name.

Bramble Green Hairstreak (Callophrys dumetorum):

Brazilian Skipper (Calpodes ethlius), underwing:

Brown Elfin, Callophrys augustinus:

Cabbage White (Pieris rapae), male:

Cabbage White, female:

Cabbage White, underwing:

California Dogface (Zerene eurydice), male underwing:

JAC: This butterfly was on a stamp:

Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Designed by Stanley Galli., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

California Dogface female underwing:

California Dogface, male upperwing:

California Dogface, female upperwing:

California Dogface, larvae on False Indigo Bush (Amorpha fruticosa):

California Hairstreak (Satyrium californica):

California Ringlet (Coenonympha california), dark morph:

California Ringlet, light morph:

California Ringlet, mating pair:

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 15, 2024 • 8:15 am

Several people sent batches of photographs in, and many thanks to them. We have enough for about a week.

Today’s Sunday, which means that we have photos from biologist John Avise, who has moved from birds to lepidopterans. John’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them:

Butterflies in North America, Part 2 

This week continues the series on butterflies that I have photographed in North America.  I’m continuing to go down my list of species in alphabetical order by common name.

Atala (Eumaeus atala), underwing:

Atlantis Fritillary (Speyeria atlantis):

Baltimore Checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton):

Baltimore Checkerspot, underwing:

Barred Sulphur (Phoebis philea) underwing:

Behr’s Metalmark (Apodemia virgulti), topwing:

Behr’s Metalmark underwing:

Bernadino (square-spotted) Blue (Euphilotes allyni), male topwing:

Bernardino Blue, female:

Bernardino Blue, underwing:

Eastern Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes), male:

Black Swallowtail, underwing:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 24, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today we have a surprise from biologist John Avise: butterfly photos. And he reminds us of how many times his photos have appeared here (they’ve all been of birds):

You’ve posted a total of more than 3500 of my avian photographs across 231 Sundays!  I thought it might be time to start sending some other wildlife that I’ve photographed, so this week let’s start a long series on butterflies of North America.

Butterflies in North America, Part 1 

Longtime readers of WEIT might rightly suspect that I photograph only birds.  But that is far from correct.  In truth, almost any wildlife is fair game for my camera.  This week I exemplify this point by beginning a many-part series on butterflies that I have photographed over the years in North America (mostly in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, or California).  In general, I find butterflies to be much easier to photograph than birds, because they often sit still nearby.  Typically, I use the same 300 mm telephoto lens that I use for birds, except that the butterflies are much closer to me so the focal distance becomes critical.  I’m six feet tall, and butterflies perched near my feet happen to be at a perfect distance for close-up photos with that lens.

Acmon Blue (Icaricia acmon), male topwing:

Acmon Blue, male underwing:

Acmon Blue, female topwing:

Acmon Blue, female underwing:

American Copper (Lycaena phlaeas), topwing:

American Copper, underwing:

American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis), topwing:

American Lady, underwing:

Anise Swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon), topwing:

Anise Swallowtail, underwing:

Aphrodite Fritillary (Speyeria aphrodite), topwing:

Aphrodite Fritillary, underwing:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 21, 2024 • 8:15 am

Regular contributor Mark Sturtevant has once again sent us a batch of lovely insect photos, including some arachnids and one mammal). Mark’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The first part of this set are photographs from the gardens around my house, and then we move out to area parks. I live in eastern Michigan.

The lovely beetle shown in the first picture is a Lily Leaf Beetle (Lilioceris lilii). These become common on the lilies that the wife likes to grow, and they are a minor pest on them as they riddle the plants with holes. I had never seen the larvae, but while preparing this post I had learned that they hide under the leaves and I simply never looked there. The larvae are disgusting, as they cover themselves with their droppings as a deterrent. I should definitely photograph some next season!:

Next up is another example of Say’s Mantidfly (Dicromantispa sayi). In my last post I had shown a female, and this is a smaller male. This species of Mantidfly grows up by living and feeding inside the egg sacs of spiders, and there are always jumping spiders on our shed and that is where I find Mantidflies:

Back in the garden there is always drama of one kind or another. I was very elated one day to find a Cuckoo wasp foraging at the daisies, as shown in the next picture. I won’t be able to identify the species without careful inspection, but these beautiful wasps are usually challenging to photograph since they are normally very alert and active. I simply got lucky here. Cuckoo wasps are so-named because they are kleptoparasites in the nests of wasps or bees. Besides feeding on the provisions meant for the larvae of their hosts, they also eat the host eggs or larvae as well:

Predators commonly stay among the daisies in the garden, including the crab spiders shown in the next two pictures. I believe these are Misumenoides formosipes, based on the ridge that I could see just underneath the frontal eyes. The second picture shows one that has taken a Green Bottle Fly, Lucilia sericata:

Next are pictures taken from local parks. Here is one of our larger species of skipper butterfly, the Indigo Duskywing, Erynnis baptisiae. One can generally recognize skippers since they are usually moth-like butterflies, and they have distinctly hooked-shaped clubs on their antennae. In my younger years it was believed that skippers were a separate group from butterflies, but now they are found to be within the latter. And while we are at it, butterflies are now understood to be descended from moths, but let’s move on:

The remaining pictures were all taken on one day at a flower-filled and very productive meadow near where I work. There are more pictures from that park from this day, but those will have to wait for later.

First up is this extremely metallic Dogbane Beetle (Chrysochus auratus). These are vegetarian on a narrow range of host plants, including Dogbane, which makes the insects toxic:

The beetle shown in the next picture had me stumped for a while, but the distinctly “flabellate” antennae and an old field guide helped me to narrow it down. This is a kind of Wedge-shaped beetle, Macrosiagon limbata, and that surprised me since it does not resemble the one species that I know from this obscure family. This one is a male, identified by its antennae. Females will lay eggs on flowers, and the active larvae that hatch will clamber onto a passing bee to be taken back to the nest. There they will consume the larvae in the nest:

Many Bergamot flowers were in the field, and they were well tended by many of these clear-winged sphinx moths (Hemaris sp), and you can see tthat it is a bumble bee mimic:

The final insect-related pictures show why I spend much time carefully looking under leaves. I will likely never learn the species names of these insects, however. The white mass on the right is a bundle of cocoons from the Braconidae family of wasps, which are small wasps that are parasitoids inside the bodies of caterpillars. The term “parasitoid” is preferred here, rather than parasite, since the insects live inside the bodies of their hosts – parasite-like – but they quite deliberately and slowly kill their host, while parasites aren’t supposed to do that on purpose. The eviscerated caterpillar has fallen away, unfortunately, but while it was there it would be laying across the cocoons, still barely alive for a time, and actively “protecting” the cocoons in a strange example of how a hosts’ behavior is changed by parasitoid wasps. I have seen this many times, and you can see it as well in this very entertaining Ze Frank video that Jerry posted recently.

But that isn’t all. What are those black thingies to the left? Well, those are the pupae of a kind of hyperparasitic wasp – very small wasps that are parasitoids of the parasitoids. I had seen these mini-tombstones of pupae many times on plants, but this is the first time that I had enough context to understand the bigger picture about them. If you look carefully you will see an adult wasp among the pupae – a detail that I did not see at the time. Based on some findings in BugGuide, I suggest that this second group is from the Eulophidae family, as shown in the linked picture:

Next is a close-up of the Eulophid pupae. This required the Raynox 250 diopter lens to boost the power of the macro lens. The yellow stuff next to the pupae is called meconium, and they are the gut contents of the hyperparasitoid larvae. When a larva pupates, it will first purge its gut contents:

When I excitedly showed this amazing story to the wife, she was quite horrified.

After a pleasant and very productive afternoon spent in the flower-filled meadow, I noticed that I was being watched by a curious onlooker:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 16, 2024 • 8:15 am

After today’s photos, we have only tomorrow’s photos, the regular Sunday contribution by John Avise.  After Sunday: bupkes! Please send in your wildlife photos.

Today we have the fifth and final set of photos taken by reader Chris Taylor on his recent trip to Queensland (see here for earlier photos).  Chris’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

This is the final part of the photographs from Queensland.

In the final week of the trip, we spent the time back on the coast, visiting a number of locations.

This is the white form of the Pacific Reef Heron, Egretta sacra, seen on the rocks at Flying Fish Point.

There are a number of Mistletoes in Australia, most of which are parasitic on other trees and shrubs such as Eucalypts. The seed needs to be deposited on the branch of the host tree where it can germinate and grow its roots under the bark of the host tree. Mistletoes have coevolved with the Mistletoe Bird and a strategy has developed to ensure this is not left to chance. The seeds of the plant are enclosed in a fruit that attracts the bird to eat it. The seed quickly passes through the gut of the bird, which then defecates the seed onto the host plant. The seed retains a sticky coating which fixes the seed onto the branch, ready to grow and infect the host.

Mistletoe Bird, Dicaeum hirundinaceum, eating a berry of Jointed Mistletoe, Viscum articulatum, which is growing on a small eucalypt tree.

Nearby was one of the Clearwing Swallowtail butterflies, Cressida cressida. Unusually for a butterfly, they have few scales on the front wings, giving them a translucent appearance

Next, we went south to the area at the foot of the Wooroonooran range. The two highest peaks in Queensland, Mt Bartle Frere and Mount Bellenden Ker, are in this range. Although not tall by comparison to other mountain ranges, at only 1622m and 1593m elevation respectively, the range undoubtedly has a big effect on the weather of the Wet Tropics. We stopped in the town of Babinda, claims to be the wettest place in Australia, a distinction also claimed by the nearby town of Tully. Both of these towns have an annual average of more than 4.25 metres of rain. Because of the high rainfall, there are a number of pristine rivers flowing out of the range, such as Babinda Creek, here flowing out of the rainforest cloaking the slopes of the mountains

The mountains are made up of a lot of hard granitic rocks, and so there are a number of waterfalls in the range; these are the Josephine Falls

On the flatlands below the range is the Eubenangee Swamp. There is a small nature reserve here with a short hike through the rainforest. Lots of birds were calling, along with a colony of Fruit Bats. But they all kept up in the canopy, where they were well hidden, so the smaller denizens were the ones that caught our attention. For some reason most of the insects we saw here were dark in colour!

This butterfly is the Evening Brown, Melanitis leda. This insect is remarkable in that it takes two different forms, dependent upon the season. This is the Dry season form, which resembles a dried-up leaf. The Wet season form has a lighter brown colour and black and white spots.

Also here were some Dingy brown, Mycalesis perseus.

And Yellow-eyed Plane, Neptis praslini:

Even the dragonflies here had dark wings! This is the Painted Grasshawk, Neurothemis stigmatizans.

In the dim light of the rainforest canopy, there was an exception to this rule. This is the Red-banded Jezebel, Delias mysis.

We left Eubenangee in the late afternoon, as the sun was making a light show through the Wooroonooran range, a finale to our stay in Queensland. Next day we caught the plane to fly back to Canberra.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 22, 2024 • 8:15 am

Reader Chris Taylor send us part 5 of his series on the flora and fauna of Queensland (see the first four parts here).  You can enlarge Chris’s photos by clicking on them, and his captions are indented.

In this part I will show some of the butterflies of far north Queensland.  Many were photographed at Kuranda, but I was also able to get photos from other places too.  I also saw quite a number of the spectacular Ulysses butterfly, but on this trip, I wasn’t able to capture a photo.

My partner and I rode up from Cairns on the Kuranda Railway. This amazing piece of engineering was built to serve the gold and tin mines on the Tablelands.  From sea level it has to rise over 300 metres over a distance of 30 km. It snakes in and out of steep gorges, and at Stoney Creek it crosses a viaduct built in a very tight curve where the river pours down a set of waterfalls:

At the top of the climb, we pass the Barron Falls, where the Barron River plunges 265m in a number of cascades, descending into the gorge. In the Wet, there is often a huge volume of water falling here, making for a spectacular sight:

Here are the photos of the butterflies.

Orange Migrant, Catopsilia scylla. Wingspan 40mm:

Red Lacewing, Cethosia cydippe. Wingspan 80mm:

Large Grass-yellow, Eurema hecabe, wingspan 50mm.

Blue-Banded Eggfly, Hypolimnas alimena, male, 85mm:

Common Eggfly, Hypolimnas bolina, male, 80mm. The blue/violet colours on the wings does not come from a pigment, but from the refraction of light through the scales. This made it tricky to photograph as the colour kept shifting as the insect moved:

Common Eggfly, Hypolimnas bolina, female, 80mm. The female lacks the iridescence of the male, and instead is marked with patches of white and reddish brown.

Cruiser, Vindula arsinoe, male, Wingspan 80mm:

Cruiser, Vindula arsinoe, female, Wingspan 80mm. The female form of this butterfly lacks the bright orange of the male, but is beautifully marked with white and grey:

Lurcher, Yoma sabina, Wingspan 70mm:

The largest butterfly in Australia, and one of the most spectacular, is the Cairns Birdwing. This is the male of the species. The female is a little bigger, but lacks the iridescent colours of the male, instead being mostly black.

Cairns Birdwing, Ornithoptera euphorion, male, wingspan 120mm:

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 16, 2024 • 8:15 am

Reader Chris Taylor send us part 4 of his series on the flora and fauna of Queensland (see the first three parts here).  You can enlarge his photos by clicking on them, and his captions are indented.

Back at Sunday Camp, there was a Pied Butcherbird, Cracticus nigrogularis, in one of the gum trees.  The Butcherbird is largely carnivorous, and got its name from its habit of sometimes impaling its prey on a thorn in a tree – or on barbed wire:

A Blue-Faced Honeyeater, Entomyzon cyanotis, was feeding in a Callistemon tree outside the main shed:

And a Great Bowerbird, Chlamydera nuchalis, flew away in the dusk. These birds are known for making a bower where the male can display to the female and, if she likes his work, she will mate with him there. She then has to complete the task of raising the brood by herself. The male here has been sneaking into the sheds, and taking anything that takes his fancy to adorn the bower. Clothes pegs and such are not missed, but I believe one of the birds made off with a key fob, complete with key, that was later retrieved from his bower. There is no information about whether this made him a more successful mate!

A Granny’s Cloak moth, Speiredonia spectans, came out for the night. Wingspan about 65mm:

After two weeks working on the reserve, we drove back to the Rainforests on top of the ranges.  This is at Malanda, where we took a short stroll into the rainforest around the North Johnstone River, hoping to see some Tree Kangaroos  – we didn’t find any this time!

Many different fungi were growing in the damp leaf litter, here are two of the most unusual:

Brush Turkeys, Alectura lathami, were busy around the forest. These large birds are members of the Megapodidae or mound builders, as are the Orange footed Scrubfowl that was in part 1.

In the Megapodes,the male builds a nest mound out of leaf litter and earth. The mound of the Brush Turkey can be over 1m high and 4m across. The females then visit the nest and lay their eggs into the mound, where the warmth from the composting mound incubates the eggs. The male then spends all his time adding or removing material to regulate the temperature.

This one is out walking across the car park:

Away from the entrance and deep within the dim light of the canopy, we saw this male Brush Turkey in the process of building a mound. He is using his large feet to kick all the vegetation from the path onto the pile behind him. It is easy to see just how thorough he is being; he hasn’t left much on the part of the path he’s cleared, and he has cleared it like that for some 5m!:

Also in the car park, a Nankeen Night Heron, Nycticorax caledonicus, stood for his portrait.

Finally, we arrived back in Cairns where we would stay for the last week. Near to our apartment was a park with an amazing green Jade Vine, Strongylodon macrobotrys. Not a native of Australia, but what an unusual colour: