Lycaenids (also called Gossamer Wings) are a favorite group among butterfliers. They are tiny, swift-flying, and often colorful. In some years many species hardly appear at all, in others years they have great outfalls. Some are the most abundant species around; others the greatest rarities. Perhaps they take the place for insect watchers that warblers have for bird watchers. We have found nineteen species so far on Crowley's Ridge.
This is everyone's favorite: the Harvester. It has lovely subtle colors and patterns. It always appears just when you least expect it. Its life history is somewhat unique among American butterflies: It lays its eggs, usually on alders, on infestations of woolly aphids, which the caterpillars carnivorously feed on.
It hardly ever shows its upper side.
This particular Harvester is laying its eggs on a Smilax (or Green Briar) vine, near a major aphis infestation.
The slug-like Harvester caterpillars feed voraciously on their helpless prey.
We looked for years before we found our first one.
The American Copper was common in our garden when we first moved here thirty years ago. We haven't seen it here for years, and it may now be extinct on the Ridge.
American Copper
The Bronze Copper appears in some years along the Mississippi River in Mississippi and Crittenden counties, and from there occasionally strays up onto the Ridge. This is the male.
This is the female Bronze Copper.
Bronze Copper.
The hairstreaks are the largest group of Lycaenids on the Ridge, making up some eleven species. The most spectacular among them is the Great Purple Hairstreak, which we have seen a few times but never got close enough to photograph. But the others have been ample compensation. For example, look at this quietly handsome Coral Hairstreak.
The beautiful greens and browns on the Juniper Hairstreak make it unmistakable.
Even though it also comes in several color forms, from dull brown
to turquoise
even to blue.
The eye-like spots at the back end, and the antenna-like projections, are a feature of most hairstreaks. They move their wings back and forth, waggling the "antennae," and a bird trying to catch them by the head grabs a bit of wing instead, while the butterfly escapes in the other direction. This one is the Banded Hairstreak.
In a good year the Banded Hairstreak turns up in large numbers in early summer. You pick through them to find the less common species, which often are only a stripe or two different in pattern. So note on this one, just to have a mark to hold onto, that the blue spot on the bottom corner does not have, on the inner side, a strong orange cap.
This is the Striped Hairstreak, somewhat like the Banded, but with some extra stripes and the addition of a strong orange cap on the blue spot.
The orange cap on the blue, and the white sideways W on the hind wing is a sign that this is an Oak Hairstreak, a somewhat scarce species on the Ridge.
The White M Hairstreak, with the orange dot inland of the blue dot, and with that isolated white spot on the hind wing, is considered a rarity (though there are usually a few around on Crowley's Ridge). Its upper wings are a deep saturated blue, but it will only show them in flight.
This one comes in slightly different colors and patterns, but if it has a strong red band in the front and hind wing both, then it is the Red-banded Hairstreak. It's very common low down on the ground in woodland, but easy to overlook.
The Gray Hairstreak (with a strong red band only on the hind wing) is, next only to the Red-banded Hairstreak, the commonest member of the hairstreaks.
Unlike the other species of hairstreak, the Gray Hairstreak often rests with its wings open. The gray abdomen indicates that this individual is a female.
The red abdomen here shows that this is a male. This one raced around like this for several minutes, showing all his colors and flicking his wings to help waft his pheromones about. It was evidently for the sake of two nearby females.
Here is the Gray Hairstreak caterpillar with the slug shape typical of Lycaenid caterpillars. It has a pattern designed to hide it in among the flowerheads that it feeds on.
One day this very pretty aberrant Gray Hairstreak (with the typical pattern appearing smeared) showed up in our garden to have its picture taken.
The elfins are a subset of the hairstreaks. The tiny Henry's Elfin is out in early spring, often in the vicinity of redbud trees. If you haven't seen it by the third week in April, you have probably missed it.
The Eastern Pine Elfin is only found in the immediate vicinity of pine trees (which are not very common on Crowley's Ridge).
Look at the fat egg-filled abdomen on this one, egg-laying at the flowering parts of new pine shoots.
The blues are the final group of Lycaenids on the Ridge. So far we have found five species. This one is the Eastern Tailed Blue, easily identified as the only species of blue on the Ridge with tails.
The female is gray above rather than blue like the male.
When they are flying you see the blue or gray of the uppersides. When they land, the wings are most often closed, and you see light marking underneath, but a red spot and a tail (unless it has been broken off). This species gathers in huge numbers to mud puddle (see the first picture in this album). The Eastern Tailed Blue is one of the most abundant butterfly species in the state.
The Spring Azure is one of the first butterfly species out in the spring. It flies higher than the E. Tailed Blue, and is a beautiful azure blue. It has no red spot below, and no tails.
The underwing pattern of the Spring Azure is varied, from heavily marked to almost no marking.
When that first generation of azures gets old and begins disappearing, suddenly there is a fresh new generation, usually with much lighter marking underneath. We call these a separate species: Summer Azures. But this is still being debated by taxonomists.
Reakirt's Blue is a more westerly species that sometimes erupts into eastern Arkansas and the Ridge. It is an open grassland species and rare here.
Here is a real rarity. In fact, a vagrant: the Marine Blue. It is a western species noted for occasionally appearing far to the east of its usual territory.
It was mud puddling in with several hundred Eastern Tailed Blues. Because they are so lightly marked underneath (go back to the first picture in this album to see how they looked), and it is so heavily marked, I could spot it before I got out of my car. It was like finding a haystack in a mound of needles. For two more species of Lycaenids, see the album "Other Arkansas Butterflies"
