EIGHT-EYED BUTTERFLIES

      The beautiful buckeye butterflies have "eight" eyes, two on top of each of four wings.  All of them are fake, but serve to scare away would-be predators.  Those fraudulent eyes identify buckeyes, and are not all the same size, for added interest in their color patterns.  

     Six eyes of the eight have purple"pupils", which is how buckeye butterflies got their common name.  Each of those eyes has yellow around it, and a thin, black line around the yellow, for added beauty.  Those intriguing eyes are an accident of genetics that benefitted ancestral buckeyes.  The many succeeding generations of buckeyes carried the genes that cause those eyes on their wings to the present generation, to the benefit of all those generations.

     The handsome buckeyes have other attractive markings on top of their wings that aid in camouflaging, and identifying, them.  All four, pretty upper wing surfaces are a pleasant, light, olive-brown, with two orange bars on each forewing and one curved stripe on each hindwing.

     The striking buckeyes inhabit meadows, roadsides and abandoned fields in much of the United States.  I mostly see them sipping nectar from various kinds of flowers during late summer and into autumn, but only one, or a few, at a time in any one human-made meadow or field.

     Buckeyes migrate south during September and October to find flowers where they can sip nectar through winter.  But the next spring survivors come north to start another generation of themselves.  Their caterpillars ingest the foliage of petunias, butter-and-eggs, plantain and other kinds of plants they hatched on in sunny habitats.

     Buckeye butterflies are beautiful creatures we see sipping nectar from various types of flowers in sunny habitats.  Watch for these distinctive insects with eight fraudulent eyes on their wings for a real treat in nature.      

         

          

   

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