northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here are male and female Zabulon Skippers I met about 5 minutes apart; could they wind up in marital bliss? Well, probably not the way humans would define it. I believe that even if they did mate, a male defending a good territory will probably mate with more than 1 female, and after mating the female probably never sees her "husband" again. And of course being 5 minutes away may mean that the female was actually in the territory of a completely different male, and she got together with that different male instead. Zabulons are fairly common butterflies, so the female probably didn't have to travel very far to find a receptive male. The 1st picture shows the male Zabulon Skipper who's not feeding but probably looking for males to chase away and females to court. The 2nd picture shows a female who looks like she's nectaring on a Red Clover . June 3, 2023 at John Clyde Native Grassland Preserve Photo 300858592, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) June 3...

Monarch butterflies are back, though they may not be easy to spot/identify. Though this is my 1st decent (non-blurry) picture of them this season, I've almost certainly been seeing solitary ones fluttering around since mid-May. The main problem right now is that there aren't a lot of flowers in bloom, and many butterflies don't sit still unless there's some nectar for them to slurp up. There is quite a bit of Foxglove Beardtongue in bloom, though this plant seems more popular with bumblebees. Monarchs and many other butterflies (I'm pretty sure I've seen glimpses of Eastern Tiger Swallowtails too) seem to be flying maniacally over the meadows looking for the few nectar sources available to them. But things are changing. Monarchs somewhat surprisingly will visit the non-native Red Clover , and that's in bloom already. Our milkweeds and dogbanes have just started to bloom, and Monarchs (among many other pollinators) love that stuff. Pretty soon there ought t...