- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Strange weather we're having here in Central California.
After soaring into the 90s, the temperatures pushed again into the 80s today (Oct.21). The Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) are "making the most-est" of their host plant, passionflower vines. Blossoms keep popping up like so much popcorn. And the Gulf Frits are there to lay their eggs all over the plant, including the tendrils, leaves, stems and blossoms.
The showy reddish-orange butterfly with the silver-spangled wings is a favorite this time of year. It's sort of like a Halloween gift before Thanksgiving.
We remember when it vanished in the Sacramento-Davis area and was even considered extinct around here in the early 1970s.
Butterfly expert Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, sounded the alarm back then. He knows its history well.
“It first appeared in the vicinity of San Diego in the 1870s,” he told us. “It spread through Southern California in urban settings and was first recorded in the Bay Area about 1908. It became a persistent breeding resident in the East and South Bay in the 1950s and has been there since.”
Since 2000, the Gulf Frit has been recolonizing again throughout the area. Thankfully!
The butterfly lays its eggs only on passionflower vines (genus Passiflora)--lots of eggs--so expect the caterpillars to skeletonize the plant. It's a good idea to offer some nearby nectar for the adults, too. Their favorites include the butterfly bush, Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) and lantana.
Let's see, fall began Sept. 23, and winter arrives Dec. 21.
For the Gulf Frits, it might as well be spring!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's delightful to see the gray hairstreak.
We're not talking about the gray streaks in our hair as we age (to perfection, of course!).
We're talking about the gray hairstreak, a common gray butterfly found throughout the United States, coast to coast, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. Entomologists describe Strymon melinus as a small gray butterfly with a wingspan of from 2.6 to 3.65 centimeters. It is distinguished by its black-eyed orange spot at the base of its hindwing tails. It also has a small patch of blue before the tail, and two broken crossbands of black and white spots.
You may have seen it nectaring on a variety of plants. Indeed, it's considered one of the most polyphagous of butterflies. It works such flowers as sunflowers, lantana, clover, cosmos, mallows, and the like. In abundance, the larvae can become pests of cotton, peas, corn, corn, hops and other commercial agricultural crops. Cotton farmers call the larvae the "cotton square borer." The insect, however, is a pollinator more than it is a pest.
Perched on a flower with its wings up, the gray hairstreak resembles a sailboat.
It's on a winning steak. It flies fast, skillfully avoiding birds bent on a quick meal. It's a winner in other ways, too:
- it's abundant; not endangered.
- It's gray, but colorful.
- It's a flexible eater, not picky.
Read what Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, says about the butterfly on his website.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Privacy, please!
You're walking by a patch of lavender and Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) and you notice that two Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) are doing what birds 'n' bees 'n butterflies do.
Well, some folks call it "bug porn" and some call it a "two-for" images--two insects in one photo. But in this case, this was a "three-for" image. A honey bee nectaring on the nearby lavender photobombed my image and the mating pair, still attached, clumsily fluttered off in a four-wing attempt. Appropriately enough, they headed over to the pasionflower vine, their host plant
We recall butterfly expert Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, telling us several years ago that the showy reddish-orange butterfly is making a comeback in the Sacramento-Davis area. In the early 1970s, it was considered extinct in that area.
“It first appeared in the vicinity of San Diego in the 1870s,” he related in a previous Bug Squad blog. “It spread through Southern California in urban settings and was first recorded in the Bay Area about 1908. It became a persistent breeding resident in the East and South Bay in the 1950s and has been there since.”
Shapiro says it “apparently bred in the Sacramento area and possibly in Davis in the 1960s, becoming extinct in the early 1970s, then recolonizing again throughout the area since 2000.”
One of the Gulf Frit's favorite nectar sources is lantana (genus Lantana, family Verbenaceae.) In our yard they also lean toward the lavender and Tithonia.
There, on appropriate occasions, they like a little privacy.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Never say "pipe down" to a pipevine swallowtail.
It's a butterfly we treasure.
You may have seen it nectaring on your butterfly bush. It's black with blue iridescent upper wings and orange arrowhead-like spots on its inner wings.
Butterfly expert Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, says on his website, Art's Butterfly World, that Battus philenor is "unmistakable and very conspicuous as both a larva and an adult."
So are the eggs. The eggs are red or rust-colored, while the larvae or caterpillars are black with red spots.
Shapiro describes Battus philenor as "the signature riparian butterfly of our region, occurring along streams in foothill canyons and on the Central Valley floor, essentially everywhere where its only host plant, California pipevine or Dutchman's pipe, Aristolochia californica, occurs."
The butterfly, also nicknamed "blue swallowtail," is found throughout North America and Central America.
"Adults are eager visitors to many flowers, including wild radish, California buckeye, blue dicks, Ithuriel's spear, and Yerba Santa," according to Shapiro. "In summer they regularly nectar at yellow starthisle when there are no native plants in bloom."
"This species is warningly colored and inedible to vertebrate predators," Shapiro writes. "It derives its protection from the toxic aristolochic acids produced by the host, which it sequesters; females even pass these along to the eggs, which are also protected (and are brick red, laid in bunches of up to 20, and quite conspicuous). Eggs are laid only on young, tender, growing shoot tips and the larvae must begin by feeding on these. Initially they feed in groups. As they get larger they scatter and can tackle large, mature leaves. But because these react to feeding damage by becoming more toxic and unpalatable, a larva will feed on a single leaf only for a short time and then has to move on. Eventually most or all leaves end up damaged, but few are badly damaged. The larvae also feed eagerly on the immature fruits, which look like small bananas with fluted edges. In big swallowtail years little if any seed ends up being set."
The adults live about a month.
So, let's enjoy them while we can! We followed this one around on our butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) this afternoon as the sun dipped low in the sky. Usually, we see only the side view, but this one provided a dorsal view, flashing its colors.
Blue. Brilliant blue. iridescent blue.
Is any other blue so glorious?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
This is a a story about a spider and a skipper.
Technically, a banded garden spider (Argiope trifasciata) and a fiery skipper butterfly (Hylephila phyleus, family Hesperiida).
The garden spider lies in wait, its head down, clinging to its real estate, an enormous sticky web. A male skipper flits from Tithonia to Tithonia, sipping nectar. Then the skipper makes a fatal mistake; it tries to pass through the nearly invisible web.
If you combine a very sticky web with a very hungry spider and an inattentive butterfly, the results are not good for the butterfly.
It's over within seconds. The spider bites the skipper, paralyzing it with its powerful venom, and then wraps it for a later meal.
The drama all unfolds in our "bee" garden but today it's a "spider" garden. Predator vs. prey. The spider eats today.
On his website, UC Davis butterfly Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, describes the fiery skipper as "California's most urban butterfly, almost limited to places where people mow lawns. Its range extends to Argentina and Chile and it belongs to a large genus which is otherwise entirely Andean. Its North American range may be quite recent. Here in California, the oldest Bay Area record is only from 1937. At any rate, it is multiple-brooded, and appears to experience heavy winter-kill in most places; scarce early in the season, it spreads out from local places where it survived, gradually reoccupying most of its range by midsummer and achieving maximum abundance in September and October.
The fiery skipper "occasionally colonizes upslope to about 3000' in the Gold Country but does not seem to survive the winter; strays have been taken to 7000' and on the East slope," Shapiro says. The butterfly breeds mostly on Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) and "the adults swarm over garden flowers such as lantana, verbena, zinnias, marigolds, buddleia. And in the wild they're quite happy with yellow starthistle."
As for the banded garden spider, BugGuide.net offers this identification: "Pale yellow, carapace has silver hairs, abdomen is striped in silver, yellow, and black...Its legs are spotted."
Yes, they are.