FAVORITE COLOFUL BUTTERFLIES

      Tiger and zebra swallowtail butterflies, monarch and red admiral butterflies and buckeye butterflies have large, colorful wings that make them quite visible sipping nectar from alfalfa and red clover flowers, roadside flowering plants and blooms in backyard gardens in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, particularly from mid-July to the middle of September.  Use a field guide to eastern butterflies to see the colors and patterns of these beautiful butterflies. 

     These common, showy butterflies, my favorites, pollinate those blossoms as they sip nectar, and flutter daintily from one flower to another.  And in that process, they help beautify and enliven the hay fields, roadsides and gardens they patronize to get nectar.  And these kinds of butterflies, like all species, have interesting life histories.    

     Tiger swallowtails are yellow with black stripes on their wings.  Their caterpillars are green, which camouflages them, have fake eyes on their thoraxes that scare away some predators and munch tulip tree and cherry tree foliage.  

     Zebra swallowtails are white with black stripes on their wings.  But this species is limited to where pawpaw trees grow because their larvae ingest only the leaves of that more southern tree.

     Monarch and red admiral butterflies are annual migrants, but in different ways.  In March, adult monarchs leave certain forests in mountains in Mexico and fly north.  Along the way they stop to mate, the females lay eggs on milkweed plants, and that whole generation dies.  Two more generations do the same as they advance in every direction across the United States.  But the fourth generation that hatches in August, pupates and flies south in September to those same forests in Mexico to spend the winter. 

     I remember one afternoon early in May, some years ago, when I saw flocks of butterflies winging north, low to the ground, everywhere I went that day.  I never before saw such a phenomena.  With binoculars I noted they were red admirals.  Later, I read that red admirals do migrate north in flocks, but normally high, and out of our view.  But occasionally, they migrate low, when they cause a spectacle.

     Monarch caterpillars only consume milkweed leaves, while red admiral larvae ingest stinging nettle leaves, with no ill effects.  Different foods eliminates competition for food, and helps create different species of life.  

     The lovely, charming buckeye butterflies are mostly brown and orange, with two fake, dark eyes on each back wing and one fake, dark eye on each front wing, which I presume intimidate would-be predators.  Their caterpillars eat snap dragon and plantain foliage.

     Caterpillars of butterfly species eat the vegetation their eggs were laid on.  Their food is right there; no need for wings.  But, after they pupate and emerge as adults, their main goal is to mate.  Therefore, they need wings to go to far-flung mates. 

     These butterflies, and other kinds, add beauty and interest to farmland and lawns.  People can help them by providing larvae food, and adult food in the form of flowers that butterflies prefer.    

     

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MERLINS

      Fast and powerful fliers to catch small birds in mid-air, merlins are exciting to see in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania cropland, which I do occasionally during their April and October migrations.  These handsome, dove-sized falcons, related to peregrines, are wild, exciting additions to the prairies, shorelines and human-made farmland of the United States when they migrate north to their nesting areas and south to their wintering places.  During those spring and fall months in Lancaster County farmland, I see them perched on roadside poles and wires to watch for horned larks, starlings, sparrows and other kinds of small birds, or zipping swiftly and low across fields to scare up those same birds in fields.  Merlins also sweep quickly over mud flats and beaches to chase up sandpipers and plovers, to catch one of those shorebirds at a time.          Merlins are built for catching small birds on the wing in open habitats....
Read more

LATE NESTERS

     Three kinds of abundant birds in southeastern Pennsylvania, including mourning doves, American goldfinches and cedar waxwings, nest late in summer for a variety of reasons.  Most "song" birds in this area are done raising young by the middle of July, but these three adaptable species could be rearing offspring into early September as a result of being dependent on certain foods or nesting materials that are most abundant in late summer.       Each pair of handsome mourning doves raises two young per brood, but they "put-out" two young a month, on average, from March into September because they rear two broods at a time through the warmer months. Each pair of doves probably can only feed two young at a time because they regurgitate pre-digested seeds into the beaks of their offspring.  But they compensate for that by hatching chicks in spring and summer.       Each pair of doves starts a brood of young early in March....
Read more

"EASTERN ROADRUNNERS"

      Brown thrashers are "eastern roadrunners".  These thrashers mostly feed on invertebrates, seeds and berries on the ground, and usually run rapidly from danger, rather than fly.  But one summer afternoon, I was watching a handsome brown thrasher flipping leaves and scratching about for seeds and invertebrates in the soil of a lawn just outside a woodland.  He had warm-brown feathering on top, as all brown thrashers do, which camouflages them on the ground.        Suddenly a red-shouldered hawk swooped down toward that thrasher with the intent to kill it for a meal.  I thought the thrasher was doomed.  But the intended victim flew up toward, but under, the hawk and winged low across the lawn to the woods where it disappeared.  The hawk overshot the thrasher and by the time that predator swung around, its intended prey was long gone.  I thought, "clever thrasher".      At other times, over the y...
Read more