northeast-flora-and-fauna

I've neglected this blog recently; the past few days have been busy: In preparation of the approaching Duke Farms Butterfly Count, on Thursday I was "scouting" the property so I could alert the counters to concentrate on the more promising areas. On Friday I was helping the Raritan Headwaters Association to remove invasive plants around some bush/tree plantings at the Fox Hill Preserve. On Saturday I spent a couple hours at Duke Farms at their Outdoor Education station (primarily) talking to people about fireflies, then did some more "butterfly scouting". On Sunday we had the actual Duke Farms Butterfly Count, which left me a little worn out after 6 hours walking around the property. On Monday morning, I did my usual Steward Volunteer assignment, in this case helping to remove mostly invasive plants around one of their containment fences. We encountered a lot of the "usual suspect" butterflies on Sunday; I suspect the most abundant butterfly we found w...

Here's another example of mudpuddling butterflies, in this case Pearl Crescents . And as I've shown before, animal scat can be more nutritionally beneficial than mud, containing a concentration of minerals unlikely to be found anywhere. Mudpuddling seems to be mostly a male activity. You might think this is because they need more nutrition to fight off other males looking to mate, but in many cases their motivation is more fatherly; males will frequently pass these nutrients as a " nuptial gift " to females during mating [1]. Another interesting thing about mudpuddling is that the activity draws other butterflies in. Apparently a spot perceived to be good for mudpuddling is sufficiently valuable to butterflies that if they see others using the spot they are likely to check it out themselves. Sometimes a good spot will attract dozens of butterflies, maybe spanning a few different species. August 15, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 152591517, (c) jpviolette, some rights reser...

Here's a butterfly I usually see more of, but haven't seen as much this year, a Common Buckeye . They tend to like meadows but also like mudpuddling , so you can sometimes see them on trails going through meadows. They are a bit camera-shy though, and tend to fly off if you get their attention. I think of this as our most colorful earth-tones butterfly. Granted you can spot a little blue in the eyespot designs on the wings, but for a mostly-brown butterfly they're fairly eye catching.  June 25, 2021 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 141962973, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's a group of Eastern Tailed-Blues engaged in mudpuddling , basically trying to get nutrients from the soil that they can't get from their nectar (basically sugar water) diet. This behavior is usually performed by males, though the benefits are transferred to the females as a nuptial gift during mating, and should improve the survivability of their offspring. The two butterflies on the right have their wings down and you can see how these tiny guys get the "blue" part of their name. It's harder to see the "tail" (really just a part of the hind wings that protrude out a little bit), though other looks have me confident of the identification. May 6, 2021 at Sourland Mountain Preserve

Yesterday I originally thought I was seeing 4 Cloudless Sulphurs mudpuddling, but then I noticed that I also photographed a Sleepy Orange almost immediately after that picture. Looking back at the picture with the 4 butterflies, the edge-on one on the left looks quite a bit smaller than the 3 Cloudless Sulphurs for which we have a good view. I'm now thinking that the small one was one of our smaller sulphurs, and likely to be this guy below. Similar to birds, a lot of times you'll see different species feeding together mostly peacefully (though I think birds do have a "pecking order" that probably doesn't occur in butterflies). August 18, 2020 at Duke Farms

Here are 4 3  Cloudless Sulphurs mudpuddling  and one smaller sulphur butterfly. Yes there are 4 butterflies in the picture; over on the left is one positioned almost head-on, and their thin wings almost disappear. (One difficulty with photographing butterflies is getting a reasonably good angle without scaring the butterfly away.) All too often I'll see mudpuddling happening on scat, though in this case actual mud was involved. It's believed that mudpuddling is mostly a male butterfly activity, that the nutrients they acquire gets passed to the female during sex, and ultimately benefits their offspring. August 18, 2020 at Duke Farms