northeast-flora-and-fauna

I suspect I took this picture of a Sleepy Orange butterfly that was moving around a lot. It wasn't until I got around to getting a close look at the picture that I think I see something interesting about it. First, the leaves look like the Wild Senna that's fairly common at Duke Farms. And Wild Senna is one of the legumes that Sleepy Oranges (and some other sulphur butterflies ) use as host plants. And finally, the butterfly seems to be positioned a little unusually with the end of the abdomen touching the underside of a leaf. Put all these together, and I'm fairly sure this was a female Sleepy Orange laying eggs on the Wild Senna plants. If this culminated in an adult butterfly (predation is a challenge for most species), I suspect it'd have migrated south since Sleepy Oranges aren't believed to be able to overwinter here in NJ. (Note that some of its relatives like the Orange Sulphur and Clouded Sulphur can overwinter up here.) July 24, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo ...

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's a sulphur who was living in my neighborhood. It's either a Clouded Sulphur or an Orange Sulphur . As I've mentioned before, these are very similar butterflies can be difficult to distinguish . While the top view of the Orange Sulphur's wings usually look orangish-yellow, that effect isn't as prominent on views of the bottom of the wings. I think this one is pale enough to be a Clouded Sulphur, but the identification hasn't been endorsed (or refuted) on iNaturalist ; I suspect the coloring is in that inconclusive area. I've also warned you in the past about relying too heavily on color. All too often lighting can play tricks on what a camera produces. Unfortunately the markings of these two butterflies is close enough that color/shading really is the best way (short of a DNA test) to distinguish them. Technically these two butterflies will hybridize occasionally, it doesn't sound like it happens often. And given how similar these species are, the ...