The butterflies…
Fall 2021 was strange! The fall colors came late, and the winter even later. The weather was comfortable and warm even in December. The flowers were still going strong in late November and so were the butterflies, grasshoppers and other critters. The migratory butterflies were feeding vigorously on the flowers to fuel themselves for the rest of their journey.
A beautiful Painted Lady
Orange Sulphur gliding around
Usually the larger butterflies are very calm taking their turns to move around the flowers and drinking nectar. The little skippers, not so much! They would come to a flower and kick anyone else away from the flower and take its seat. As you might guess, these little feisty butterflies fly quickly, almost skipping from flower to flower instead of floating around. Even large butterflies like Monarchs are often mobbed by these little bullets! The skippers would happily chase away one another all the time, sometimes even flying straight towards us. Well, sometimes they get a dose of their own medicine!
Gulf Fritiallry kicking a Skipper off to take the ‘throne’
Skippers fighting for the flower
A tiny skipper
Most skippers are tiny, like the Sachem in the photo above, but some can be larger. The Silver Spotted Skipper in the photo below only visited us once.
Silver-spotted skipper having a mouthful
Here’s a quiz for the readers! Let’s see if you can figure out which one of the following two is the American Lady and which one is the Painted Lady. If you do not know the difference you can go back and look at our photos in the previous blog post to see how they can be distinguished from each other.
Which Lady is it?
Painted Lady? or American Lady?
Fritillaries are beautiful butterflies! The Gulf and the Variegated Fritillaries were both abundant and they provided us enough opportunities to capture some flying shots.
The skipper got there first! But the Variegated Fritillary won’t give up (the background of this image has been replaced)
Gulf frittilary choosing the freshest flower from the bunch
Variegated Frittilary landing on the Cosmos
If you want to take some nice butterfly photos, here are some tips for you. Unlike bird photography, mid-day is not such a bad time to take photos of butterflies. They are the most active when its warmer. So, if you want a sitting butterfly and would like more time to compose a shot, try early mornings, but if you are like us who enjoy action shots, definitely try warmer parts of the day. Besides them being more active, midday also gives an opportunity to get some interesting lighting as the sun shines from above. Since butterflies don’t have too many body parts that can cast shadows on itself, the sun being higher is not usually a problem. On the other hand, it can create some interesting backlight type effect as the light comes through the translucent wings without directly aiming at the sun. Give it a try the next time you are out taking butterfly photos. Here are two examples of such lighting. The underwings of the Gulf Fritillaries look especially gorgeous when light comes through.
Painted Lady with backlit wings
Gulf Frittilary looking for the the next stop
Pipevine Swallowtails and Question Marks visited in smaller numbers. See below a relatively boring photo of the underwing of the Question Mark to see the reason behind its nomenclature. Do you see the white “?” ?
The Question Mark butterfly
Pipevine Swallowtail
The different types of Hairstreak and Gorgone Checkerspot visits were short lived. The Gorgone Checkerspot is often confused with somewhat similar looking the Pearl Crescent (see photo below from 2020). Do you see the differences?
Gorgone Checkerspot
Pearl Crescent
The birds…
If you follow us on Facebook, you will know that we have a Red-shouldered Hawk in our neighborhood who visits us very frequently on our backyard. It is quite used to the presence of humans and doesn’t mind posing for photos. We named it Frankie and were missing its sight for several days. Good to see that Frankie decided to stop by on Sreemala’s birthday. This was taken when it was flying past us.
Frankie flying by us.
On Pratyay’s birthday, we were greeted by a handsome Yellow-billed Cuckoo on the pecan tree behind our house. Every fall, the Fall Webworms make their web on that tree, and it was a good opportunity for this bird to have a nice breakfast on the caterpillars! Cuckoos are typically expert caterpillar eaters, and they don’t mind the spiky ones.
Our madatory fall migratory species
We visited our favorite park on a fall day to find some critters with the fall color as the background. The colors were not that pronounced yet. But we saw many white-tailed deer at sunset and got some decent images.
A lonely White-tailed Deer.
The does are always alert.
Last rays of sun on fall color.
The killdeers are present year-round in this park. They breed here and when spring comes you can see a pair of little feet following the mama. The chicks are usually all grown up and on their own by the end of summer.
Killdeer
And others…
Bird and butterflies are not the only critters that we share our space with. Here comes our most noisy resident this fall, a Meadow Katydid who never failed to let us know about its presence whenever we went to the yard.
Cohabitants
It peacefully shared the space with the butterflies, grasshoppers and other insects. As the temperature dropped late in the November, one fine morning, it was gone. As loud as it was through the last few months, we kind of missed its chirp when we went outside.
We spent a good amount of time observing and photographing some Sphinx moths this year. We saw three species of them – White-lined Sphinx, Rustic Sphinx and Titan Sphinx. They are often called hummingbird moths because of how they hover over the flowers while feeding. Some of these moths are quite attractive! Although it’s quite easy to catch them in flight due to the hovering behavior, it can actually be tricky to freeze them in the best wing position to show the intricate detail of their upper wings.
White-lined Sphinx busy drinking nectar
White-lined Sphinx
Rustic Sphinx hovering above the buffet table!
Rustic Sphinx
White-lined Sphinx showing the intricate wing details!
Only sighting of Titan Sphinx!
Not everything in the garden is nice and beautiful for the pollinators. There are predators lurking in every corner. The spiders would love to tangle them in their web any time! The most common ones were the orb weavers and European Garden Spiders weaving huge web that can almost cover the sky!
European Garden Spider waiting for food
Not all spiders weave web. Some are hunters! One of them is Misumena or Flower Crab Spider. They typically wait on the flowers patiently until a pollinator visits the flower at which point it catches it and eats it. It has the ability to change its color to match the color of the flower where it is waiting for its prey. The change of color from white to yellow can take up to 10-25 days whereas the reverse is much faster and can be accomplished in about 6 days. In the picture below, you can see the crab spider waiting patiently on a sunflower to catch the bee. These spiders can often catch butterflies, even ones that are bigger than their own size.
Escaping the kiss of death.
Crab Spider after catching a Skipper
The Green Lynx Spider is also one of the hunters. They are widespread in the United states and Mexico. All spiders are good, but this one is definitely our friend, because they eat a variety of insects that includes moths and larvae. We are keeping our fingers crossed that they will take care of some of the pests next spring.
The sneaky Green Lynx Spider
Green Lynx Spider
While the Lynx and Crab Spiders were getting the reward of their patience by being able to catch some pollinators after waiting all day on the flowers, this Bold Jumping Spider seemed to be a bit too ambitious! I smiled when I saw it stalking this huge Monarch butterfly. These spiders often stalk their prey and then jump onto them, but this one soon realized that the Monarch is a little too big for it. Full credit for the “boldness” though!
Too ambitious to catch a Monarh butterfly
The skippers, as feisty they might be, are some of the smallest butterflies around, and often become easy prey to the predators. This Robber Fly, another ruthless predator, was all over it!
Robber Fly with a skipper kill
Late November, and the grasshoppers were still showing themselves, though in smaller numbers. They are beautiful creatures as long as they do not destroy our prized vegetable garden! As far as we know, this one, a Pasture Grasshopper, mostly feed on grass.
These grasshoppers are quite handsome
A tiny nymph
The little one in the photo above is a grasshopper nymph (this one is a Green-striped Grasshopper) that we saw very late in the season. It was no bigger than a centimeter. Nymphs don’t have the wings, but this one was happily hopping around in December. I guess it would try to find a warm spot to overwinter as it gets colder.
When birding and butterflying became slow, stumbling upon these strange looking fruits kept us entertained. It looks like what Professor Shonku would find during his morning walk, bring it home and strange things would follow! You may be tempted to taste it, but it is not easily edible and most foraging animals will not even touch them. It is commonly called Osage orange. There are lots of legends and fun stories around this fruit. This write up is a favorite!
Lovely pattern of the Osage orange
As the warmth of the fall months faded away, winter flocks of Europian Starlings started to gather. Every evening, they would gather at their roosting areas. Spots are first come first served! Late arrivers would never get the best spot on the wire!
Trying to fit in.
In late December, a couple of friends visited us and brought us a beautiful board game called Mariposas. They were aware of our newfound love of butterflies; hence this game based on the migration of the Monarchs. It is beautifully designed by the great Elizabeth Hargrave, and a pretty good game with a lot of replayability. What a perfect game for us to end the season!
Getting hooked to Mariposas
End of a butterfly season is always a bit sad. This was the last monarch we saw, taking off from one of our favorite flowers and heading south. Hopefully we will see some of its offspring next year!
Final goodbye from the Monarch