Nymphalids are the standard butterflies that everyone thinks of when they think of a butterfly. They are the equivalent of Passerines to a bird watcher. They are the most prominent, the commonest, the most often seen, the most normal. Here on this bit of wet sand or delicious dog dropping or whatever the attractant is, except for the blues that have snuck in on the edges, these are all Nymphalids.
We have seen thirty-one species of Nymphalids on Crowley's Ridge. Most are "normal" in appearance, but this first one, The American Snout, is a little bit bizarre. Nevertheless, it shares with all the others in this group the curious feature of having diminished and seemingly useless front legs, so that they seem to stand on only four legs. American Snouts often occur in large numbers alongside water, and they love to land on you and drink your sweat.
Their small size, labia extended into a long snout, and swept back wings, give them an unmistakable profile. On this one (something unusual), the forelegs are actually visible. American Snouts come in a variety of colors on the underside, from metallic purple to dull brown.
American Snout from above.
It's always a magic day in the summer when the Gulf Fritillaries, after an unpredictable wait, suddenly make their appearance. The word goes around quickly: The Gulf Frits are out! This bright orange one is the male.
This slightly browner one is the Gulf Fritillary female.
If you have maypop in your yard, our native species of passion flower, they will be there to lay their eggs. These mating Gulf Fritillaries are showing that the species is just as striking from the underside as it is from above.
Here is an egg being carefully laid on a tendril (I don't know why they prefer that for their oviposition site).
Gulf Fritillary egg.
The red spiky caterpillar is easily recognizable on your passion flower leaves.
And it makes a particularly active chrysalis. It hangs limply down at night like a normal chrysalis, but during the day, since it doesn't want to be seen by birds, it angles itself directly away from the sun, to create as little shadow as possible.
Gulf Fritillary, just eclosed.
This is its close relative, the Variegated Fritillary. The panel of pale yellow through the middle of the wings helps to identify it.
The Variegated Fritillary also lays its eggs on passion flower, but its rather similar caterpillar can be distinguished by having white stripes running the length of it.
The Great Spangled Fritillary is as big and richly colored as its name..
Like its cousin the Gulf Fritillary, the Great Spangled also has big silvery spots underneath.
In addition to the big orange and black fritillary and fritillary-like butterflies, there is also a group of small orange and black butterflies. By far the commonest is this Pearl Crescent. Almost anywhere you go you will find a few of these little butterflies fluttering at your feet. To help separate them from a similar species, note the row of solid black spots inside the orange squares on the hind wings.
The Pearl Crescent from underneath. Note the pale crescent near the margin of the hind wing, and that row of black spots still visible through the wing.
This is the Phaon Crescent, similar to the Pearl, but usually more brightly marked, and with that white band slashing through the forewing.
The Phaon Crescent from underneath still shows that white band, with orange on either side of it. Also note the isolated pale crescent of the Pearl is not present. The Phaon is usually found in low wet areas with beds of frog fruit, its larval food.
This is the Silvery Checkerspot, a little larger than the Pearl Crescent, but otherwise very similar. But note that row of black spots on the hind wing: On the Silvery Checkerspot, some of the spots will have holes in the middle.
The light areas in the middle of the spots can also be seen from underneath.
Silvery Checkerspots will come to your garden by the dozen if you provide them with lots of sunflowers and coneflowers and black-eyed susans, and they will repay your kindness by laying hundreds of eggs under their leaves. Here they are, just hatching.
The caterpillars will stay all together and (here is the real test of your love for butterflies) annihilate the plants leaf by leaf.
Until your yard is emptied of them.
Silvery Checkerspot Caterpillars.
A fourth little orange and black butterfly occurs very rarely on Crowley's Ridge, probably just wandering in from more open country to the west. This is the Gorgone Checkerspot. The Pearl Crescent and Silvery Checkerspot have solidly black wingtips from above, while the Gorgone has white spots within the black.
From underneath the Gorgone is recognizable by the dizzying sort of LSD pattern.
Gorgone Checkerspot
Gorgone Checkerspots.
That was the end of the fritillary-like Nymphalids; now begin the true Nymphalids with this species, the Question Mark. The Question Mark features angularly-shaped wings and, underneath, the curved line and dot that suggest a question mark.
The "question mark" confirms identity, but it is not always easy to see, and often they land with their wings open, showing only the upper side. There actually is a much better ID mark here: Note on the forewing three big black dots in a line going out from the base of the wing towards the outer tip. At the end of those three dots, there is a dash. Among many similar species, only the Question Mark has this dash.
This very different looking butterfly is also a Question Mark, as you can see from the dash at the end of the three dots. On the previous picture the hind wings were orange, signifying that it was from the fall generation, the one that overwinters, then comes out very early in the spring to lay the eggs for the summer generation. The summer generation has these black wings.
This is the darker summer-generation version of the underside.
The Question Mark lays its eggs commonly on the leaves of winged elm trees, often three or four deep.
Here, in Cheryl's nice photo, they are just hatching.
Question Mark caterpillar
Question Mark chrysalis
This somewhat smaller but very similar "angle-wing" butterfly you will notice does not have the dash following the three big spots. That marks it as a Comma, in all probability an Eastern Comma.
It's called a comma because it doesn't have the dot of the Question Mark. But this Eastern Comma is not the only comma species on Crowley's Ridge. So note that the outer halves of the under fore and hind wing are the same color: somewhat lighter than the inner halves of these wings.
Now note this individual: The outer half of the under forewing is lighter; but the outer half of the under hind wing is as dark as its inner half. Surprisingly, this distinction can be seen rather easily. It marks this as a Gray Comma, a much scarcer species. From very close up it can be seen that the "comma" itself is a narrow streak, and the underwing pattern is of fine light and dark striations.
From above you can see that the Gray Comma is smaller than the Eastern Comma, and seems to have less or diminished marking on the hind wing. But it is very similar, so you need to see the underside to confirm your identification.
Here is another Gray Comma that insisted on landing on Cheryl, showing us its pattern from closer up.
On this Gray Comma the light outer half of the forewing, and the dark outer half of the hind wing, is much more obvious.
There is no mistaking the Mourning Cloak with its rich black back and golden borders. They are out briefly in the summer looking pristine like this. Then they overwinter, and when they come out in the spring to lay eggs for the next generation, they look pretty bedraggled.
Mourning Cloak.
Some years you don't see a single Painted Lady, other years you can stand in one place and see a hundred. The black and white wing tips identify it as a lady, but the trick is to tell it from the American Lady. On this Painted Lady, note the row of four equal-sized black spots on the hind wing, and, on the forewing, the black squiggly mark going through the center of the orange panel.
Underneath on the Painted Lady that row of dots on the hind wing has opened up into four eye-spots. You can still see the black squiggle through the forewing orange panel.
This is the American Lady. What identifies it, even from a distant glance, is the big panel of orange at the base of the fore and hind wings (because that squiggly mark is mostly absent). Other confirming marks: the tiny white spot in the orange on the outer half of the forewing, and on the hind wing the uneven sizes of the spots.
The underside of the American Lady is very different, showing the white spot in the orange of the forewing and, especially, the two huge eye-spots on the hind wing.
I always thought the Red Admiral got its name because it resembled the insignia on the sleeve of an admiral, and that always helped me to remember its pattern of a stripe and white dots. It turns out the name is a corruption of the French word "admirable." The Red Admiral, like the Painted Lady, is found worldwide.
The upper side of the Red Admiral is so striking, we never stop to admire the underside.
The Common Buckeye is rather plain underneath.
From above it is one of our most beautiful butterflies. Note the broad white median band coming down from the leading edge of the forewing and going most of the way around the big eye-spot. Also note the enormous difference in size between the two hindwing eye-spots. Also note the white antennae.
Here is a darker example of this quite variable species.
On this Common Buckeye the size difference in the hind wing eye-spots is not quite so great, and the antennae are not white.
Now look closely at this individual I saw November 2007 in Village Creek State Park in Cross County on Crowley's Ridge. The band coming down is pink. It does not extend to the inside edge of the eye-spot, which is now replaced with brown (with a bit of orange in it). Now note Glassberg's (Butterflies Through Binoculars) description of the Tropical Buckeye: "FW pale median band is wide and flushed with pink. Inner edge of the large FW eye-spot is usually brown, or pale brown (occasionally with some orange)." This individual may be the first record for Tropical Buckeye in Arkansas. Unfortunately I did not get a photo of the underside, which is often distinctive in the Tropical Buckeye. Another problem is, the hind wing eye-spots are usually fairly close together in size in the Tropical Buckeye, and this one seems to have a particularly large difference. A final counter indication is the white antennae, which is a Common Buckeye character.
However, I saw this similarly marked buckeye September 21, 2009 in the Nature Center in Jonesboro in Craighead Co., about thirty miles farther north along the Ridge. And this time, I managed to get a photo of the underside.
The "prominent pale median band" (Glassberg) on the hind wing is a mark helping to suggest that this is a Tropical Buckeye. Further, on this individual the antennae are much blacker, a Tropical Buckeye character. Finally, a behavioral mark: When startled instead of flying straight up, like a Common Buckeye, it flew low and level to the ground, a Tropical Buckeye trait. Jeffrey Marcus, who is currently studying the very confusing complex of buckeye species, thinks I might be justified in calling this individual a Tropical Buckeye.
This individual was on Crowley's Ridge in Greene Co., thirty miles north of the Craighead Co. buckeye. It also shows the broad median band on the forewing at least slightly suffused with pink or orange, the inner edge of the large eye-spot replaced with brown, and this time the hind wing eye-spots are much closer together in size.
On the underside, the pale median stripe is quite prominent. I was certain this time I had a pure Tropical Buckeye. Nevertheless, Jeffrey Marcus thinks this individual shows many signs of hybridization with the Common Buckeye. And in fact, many of the buckeyes I photograph on Crowley's Ridge, he believes, show a mixture of Common and Tropical characters, suggesting they derive from southern Florida populations, where hybridization between these species, he says, is common. It will be a great relief for all of us if he can eventually straighten out the taxonomy of this group.
There are seven male Goatweed Leafwings in this picture, six almost invisible because they are only showing their cryptically colored undersides. It is a common experience to be walking down a woodland trail and suddenly have a bright orange butterfly flash up ahead of you, only to quickly vanish again when it lands. It will probably be this species.
The Goatweed Leafwing female is not quite so dazzling.
When a Goatweed Leafwing lands in the dead-leaf litter in the woods and closes its wings, it looks so exactly like a dead oak leaf that it becomes invisible.
Goatweed Leafwings
The Goatweed caterpillar is also an expert at concealing itself in plain sight. Here it is eating a goatweed leaf but looks itself like a bit of left-over leaf.
Goatweed Leafwing caterpillar.
When it gets too big to sit out on the stem, it wraps itself up in a leaf, which it closely mimics in skin texture.
If an inquisitive bird looks inside, it will be facing a bleary-eyed monster with fangs.
When things are quiet the actual caterpillar comes out.
As its last dodge, it makes a chrysalis that is like a gooey particularly noisome bird dropping.
Goatweed Leafwing just eclosed.
The Red-Spotted Purple (they are trying unsuccessfully to get us to call it the Red-spotted Admiral) is another beauty, unmistakable with its expanse of metallic blue-purple.
The red spots are all on the underside.
The Red-spotted Purple lays its eggs on the very tip end of wild cherry leaves.
The caterpillar eats the leaf from the tip inwards. All this makes it very easy to locate eggs and caterpillars. Maybe their predators haven't worked this out yet.
The fully grown caterpillar glides around with these big outriggers, like the pectoral flippers on a whale.
The Red-spotted Purple caterpillars have one neat trick. This one is feeding on this leaf.
When my approach startles it, it immediately turns in a tight circle.
And within a second or two it has become a gooey bit of bird slime. This theme gets repeated a lot.
The Viceroy is a close relative of the Red-spotted Purple. The Red-spotted Purple, with its brilliant blue back and its red spots below, is thought to mimic the Pipevine Swallowtail, a species poisonous to eat because its caterpillars fed on pipevine. The Viceroy famously mimics the Monarch, poisonous because its caterpillars fed on milkweed. The Viceroy exactly resembles the Monarch, except that it has those diagonal black lines on the hind wings which the Monarch does not.
From underneath, again the Viceroy is a perfect Monarch mimic, except for the black line cutting through the middle of the hind wing. So many of the perfect mimics in the insect world have one little detail wrong. Is it so they can recognize each other?
That completes the so-called true Nymphalids, and now we have the complex of satyrs, woodland species with subdued usually brown coloring and an abundance of eye-spots. This first is a Hackberry Emperor.
If you are out in the woods and they are anywhere around, they will quickly begin landing on you to imbibe whatever wonderful things you have on your skin and clothing. They prefer to feed on us, but their second choice is animal droppings and carcasses.
They set up territories around hackberry or sugarberry trees, the larval food plant, and attack any flying thing that approaches. Note the abundance of eye-spots on the hind wing, with a couple more spots out of sight on the forewing.
The Hackberry caterpillar resembles a brightly colored slug.
Hackberry Emperor caterpillar.
The odd Hackberry chrysalis is like a bit of leaf.
The Tawny Emperor is a close cousin with similar habits.
It differs by not having prominent eye-spots.
Next come three attractive and rather mysterious creatures, the Pearly-eyes. During the day you find them roosting in deep shadows. They are crepuscular, coming out late in the day and into the evening. The three are very similar, but worth sorting out. This first is the Northern Pearly-eye. Here are the salient features to watch for: Note the thick brown line in the middle of the forewing that rises up from the margin to a point (pointing at the eye-spots), then falls back down again, like a little mountain. Then note each line of eye-spots is enclosed inside a white outline. Finally, look at the antennae, here orange at the tip, but black just before the tip.
Now look at this one. Once again the brown line rises up to a point than drops away again; once again the line of the eye-spots is surrounded by white. But this time the antennae are completely orange, with no black just before the tip. That makes this a Southern Pearly-eye.
Here in the Mid-South the Southern Pearly-eye sometimes comes in an especially attractive golden form. Note again the all-orange antennal tips.
Now look at this one: The simple mountain line is crumpled like a fist showing its knuckles. Not only that, the individual eye-spots are each surrounded by white. This is the Creole Pearly-eye, considered a choice rarity, but in fact reasonably common on Crowley's Ridge, one of our many insect specialties.
Here is another Creole Pearly-eye. You can really see the fist here.
Here's one more Creole, just to show off.
This is an Appalachian Brown. There are a couple of widely separated local populations of these in Arkansas. So far as I know, there are none on the Ridge, but one day this one was in my backyard, and spent the day with us. I've searched the woods all around us, and never found another. I think a lot of wandering goes on with butterflies.
An Appalachian Brown from above
The satyrs are tiny gray or brown butterflies you see fluttering weakly along close to the ground on woodland paths. But they fly perpetually, and you cannot identify the various species until they stop, which they seldom do. If one stops, however, and if it is this one, and you get a good look, you will see why it is called the Gemmed Satyr.
But nine times out of ten it will be this one, the Carolina Satyr, common and drab, with its two big eye-spots on the hind wing, and one negligible one on the forewing. It's scarcely worth the trouble of raising your binoculars, especially after the hundredth one for the day.
The Little Wood Satyr is a little bit more sprightly, with its two bold eye-spots on the hind wing, and two on the fore-wing.
It even shows them from above (the Carolina Satyr has no marking from above).
Finally you come to the last one in this group: the Common Wood Nymph, and this one is always pleasant to see. Especially as it teases you: You usually only glimpse it on the other side of a thicket, slowly flapping away, flashing its creamy eye-spot patch at you.
The Monarch used to be considered its own separate thing, but now it is included in with the Nymphalids. Their sense of timing in their migrations is marvelous. Milkweed, their caterpillar food plant, dies down to the ground in winter. A sign of spring is when the first milkweed shoots come up. And it is at the moment they first show, that the first Monarchs come through, heading north from Mexico. This emerging butterfly weed is already covered with eggs.
The Monarch caterpillars grow quickly.
From tiny hatchling through all the instars to final four-inch-long instar in ten days.
Chrysos, the Greek word for gold, is the basis for the word chrysalis.
The chrysalis too is in a hurry, and ready to open in ten days.
So from the time the first egg hatches, it is barely three weeks before a new generation is out.
Monarch (note the absence of that black diagonal mark the Viceroy has).
They quickly mate, lay their eggs, die off, and there is a new generation to move a step farther north, to end in fall with a last generation in New England and southern Canada, that then holds off breeding, and instead turns around and flies down to southern Mexico for the winter.
With more good timing, the main migration flights are timed to correspond to the fall blooming of asters, a major nectar source. The album "Other Arkansas Butterflies" contains additional Nymphalid butterfly species.
