northeast-flora-and-fauna

There are 2 ways to identify the American Lady butterfly from the Painted Lady butterfly, and these pictures illustrate 1 of those ways better than the other: First picture - On the top side of the front wing, you're supposed to be able to be able to see a small white non-ringed spot in the orange of the wing of an American Lady that you won't see on a Painted Lady. (Neither the large white patches on the front wing nor the black-ringed white spot on the hind wing represent this field mark.) In my picture, you can just barely see a white spot on the front wing; it's a little to the left of what looks a little like a Batman symbol. Unfortunately the white spot on this butterfly is faint enough that it would be easy to miss it. Second picture - On the underside of the hind wings you can see 2 large, prominent eyespots , patterns on the wings that resemble (but are not) eyes. Two large eyespots clearly identify this as an American Lady; the Painted Lady would have 4 smalle...

I got a pretty good picture of this Common Buckeye last September. Depending on the year, I see these butterflies somewhere between "wow I haven't seen a Common Buckeye in a while" and "huh there's another Common Buckeye". I think I see them the most on sunny, grassy trails. Because they seem to like this habitat, I sometimes find myself inadvertently herding them up the trail; as I get closer, they fly further up the trail to get away from me. (This can happen with other butterflies and birds too.) These butterflies have very prominent eyespots, including 1 very large pair on the top of their wings. It's not completely understood why they have eyespots. Generally they make a butterfly more conspicuous, which potentially makes it easier for predators to find them. Some theories: The classic explanation is that a predator sees the eyespots and mistakenly believes they're seeing the face of a much larger animal, causing the predator to break off its ...

For a primarily brown butterfly, the Common Wood-Nymph is frequently identifiable at a glance. That's because in my area they typically have a yellow patch on the forewings with a pair of eyespots on them. I haven't spotted variations of this butterfly around here, but they do exist: Sometimes the yellow patch is instead a tan color that's lighter than the rest of the wing, but far less eye-catching. Sometimes instead of a yellow patch, the eyespots are in a round yellow ring instead. This field mark is a little harder to spot for a distance but is pretty distinctive. If you see it, you'll probably be able to ID it. Sometimes there is no patch, though the eyepatch itself is still there. August 3, 2021 at Washington Valley Park Photo 149027513, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)