northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's another  Red Admiral Butterfly I met. (These guys are fairly common, so you can expect them in more posts.) What's up with the Red Admiral name? It sounds like an antagonist in a Tom Clancy novel, but apparently their name used to be "Red Admirable", and the "admirable" got corrupted into "admiral". Apparently this is also true of other admiral butterflies . This brings up a potentially confusing thing about their name. There is a genus of admiral butterflies (local members including the Red-spotted Admiral and the Viceroy), but the Red Admiral is not in this genus; Red Admirals are actually ladies (like the Painted Lady and American Lady ). When is an admiral not an admiral? When it's a Red Admiral. (Admirals and ladies are both brush-footed butterflies though, so they are sorta related.) You could also ask why this isn't called an Orange Admiral. Well, the Red Admiral is a species native to Eurasia, and probably got named before...

Here's a cool-looking butterfly around here, the Common Buckeye . This one seems a little browner though sometimes they'll grayer. They don't have a really close relative around here but as brush-footed butterflies , they have lots of distant relatives around. They're probably one of our best-looking butterflies that are mostly earth-toned in coloring. I'll frequently find them on open ground like this one. I suspect it's basically mud-puddling for nutrients even where there's not much moisture. August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve

Meet a Common Wood-nymph Butterfly . Though they're less flamboyant than many others, these guys are also in the large brush-footed family of butterflies. In my area they tend to be pretty easy to identify. They're smallish brown with yellow patches where you can usually see at least one of a pair of dark eyespots. In a spreadwing view like below, you can see the pair of eyespots easily, but when their wings are up you may only see the frontmost spot. When I saw my first Common Wood-nymphs, I was excited to have found a butterfly that I hadn't noticed before. But when I found it in my field guides, I realized that this wasn't a big/interesting discovery after all; they described this species as "common and widespread". (Unless you're an expert already, a lot of your discoveries are likely to be plants/animals that are among the most common.) It sounds like they're a harder ID in some areas of the country where the yellow patch doesn't happen, thou...

Here's a Hackberry Emperor Butterfly , one of our brush-footed/four-footed butterflies . This is a big, visually diverse butterfly family that includes many I've discussed before, like the Eastern Comma, Question Mark, Red Admiral, and Monarch. I will confess that I usually don't get a good look at their feet, so their tendency to walk on only 4 of their legs and to have fuzzy legs doesn't typically help me with an ID. But if you've got one in your hand, it could be a good clue. Unlike more versatile butterflies like the Red Admiral, the Hackberry Emperor uses only the Hackberry Tree as a host plant during its caterpillar stage. It's not uncommon for butterflies and moths to be named after their host plants; the Spicebush Swallowtail, Pipevine Swallowtail, and Snowberry Clearwing also come to mind. July 25 at Duke Farms There is a relative to the Hackberry Emperor that looks similar, the Tawny Emperor. Though the colors aren't exactly the same, I've men...