u/Beautiful-Fondant-61

- Scientific name: Cercyonis pegala

- Aslo known as Wood nymph, Large wood nymph, Southern wood nymph, Blue-eyed grayling, and Goggle eye

- Description: This butterfly has a rectangular yellow patch on the rich cocoa-brown forewing, enclosing two large black eyespots that have white or blue pupils. The wings beneath are paler and mottled with brown striations, the forewing mirroring the pattern above, the hindwing bearing a series of yellow-rimmed eyespots. Females are larger and paler than than males and have larger forewing spots.

- Size: 2-3 inches

- Range: Across most of southern Canada and the United States, skirting only peninsular Florida, southern Louisiana, and much of eastern and southern Texas.

- The largest of the satyrids, the common wood nymph ranks as one of North America's most variable butterflies.

- The common wood nymph inhabits prairies, overgrown fields, open woodlands, and roadsides.

- Its flight is slow and erratic. When disturbed, it often dives into the grasses or nearby thickets, sitting with tightly closed wings on a stem or twig where its cryptic pattern provides near-perfect camoflauge. In spite of its large size, it can be very difficult to relocate.

- Males patrol open, grassy areas all day in search of females, which land to mate if they are receptive to the males' advances.

- Some authors state that adults visit flowers only rarely, relying mainly on sap and overripe fruit for sustenance. Others contend wood nymphs nectar voraciously at a variety of flowers. Indeed, the habits undoubtedly vary with individual populations and with resources available.

- The common wood nymph has but a single brood each year.

- Adults appear in May in the South, as late June or July farther north. Some remain on the wing until September or October.

- According to Opler and Krrizek, males live no more than two or three weeks. Females, however, emerge a few days after the male and are capable of living for several months. These authors suggest this female lengevity may be an adaptation for deferring egg-laying as long as possible after mating.

- The female deposits her eggs singly on a variety of grasses, producing as many as three hundred eggs and dispersing them widely across the fields. Caterpillars hatch in fourteen to twenty-five days and enter hibernation almost immediately. Only after emerging the next spring will they begin to feed on the leaves of the grasses, going through six instar stages before pupating. Thus summer is well on its way before the year's crop of adult wood nymphs emerges once again.

- Caterpillars are green, with paler stripes and a reddish anal fork.

This is taken at my apartment is southeast Texas. I had a hard time trying to get a picture of this little stinker but I finally managed to do it and biy look at how gorgeous his wings are. Wow.

Also I'm kinda surprised to see one due the wrens and grackles that are present in my area which are known to eat tussock caterpillars. This male somehow avoided being eaten and managed to make it into an adult.

I always seen them as larvae. Never as an adult. An today I finallly got tonsee one as an adult. I'm so excited!!!

Southeast texas

- Scientific name: Vanessa virginiensis

- Also Known as American lady, Virginia lady, and Hunter's butterfly

- Description: The beautiful American lady looks so much like the painted lady. Both are orange above with black markings, a few white spots ornamenting the black tips of the forewings. Their hindwings above have series of small submarginal spots. The American painted lady, however has two large eyespots outside the intricate cobweb pattern on the underside of the hindwing; the painted lady has a row of four or five smaller eyespots.

- Size: 1.75 - 2.5 inches

- The American painted lady was described and named in 1773 by Drury scribed from a series of specimens taken from the middle Atlantic states: New York, Maryland, and Virginia. From the latter location he coined the scientific name, V. Virginiensis. In 1775, however, Fabricius named the same species V. Huntera, and it was long known by the common name of "Hunter's butterfly, " although Drury's description clearly has scientific precedence. A checklist commitee of the North American Butterfly Association has recently suggested using simply "American lady" as the common name.

- Range: occurs feom coast to coast accross southern Canada and the United States, rangingimg through Mexico and the highlands of Central America to Columbia. It is also a migrant and temporary colonist in the West Indies and Europe. Although less migratory than the widely distributed V. cardui, it is probably not capable of surviving severe winter conditions and may recolonize the northern partion of its range each year.

- The wide-ranging American Painted Lady seldom occurs in large numbers in any area. William suggests, however, that the Edwards Plateu of Central Texas may well be "the major center of abundance for this species in the U.S." He reports huge "population explosions" in that area in the spring. More than a thousand butterflies were noted along a ten-mile stretch of highway near Enchanted Rock State Park in May 1976, with another six hundred dead beside the road. In April of 1988, four hundred and forty-seven adults were counted along a five-mile stretch with at least five hundred more dead on or near the road. "We stopped counting on both occasions but many, many, more were present," Williams writes.

- The American oainted lady prefers open areas with low vegetation, inhabiting weedy fields, woodland clearings, and vacnt lots within the city. There it visits a wide variety of flowers for nectar and also feeds on tree sap and decaying fruit.

- When startled, the American painted lady darts off in ertatic flight but often returns the same place a few moments later, sitting with wings spread wide as it sips nectar from a flower or basks in a patch of sunlight on the ground.

- The female lays her pale yellow-green, barrel-shaped eggs singly on the upper leaf surface of the host plant, and the caterpillars build individual shelters by webbing together the leaves with silk. Small larvae incorporate plant hairs in their tents; larger ones often include the flower heads.

- The group of plants variously called everlating, cudweed, pussytoes, evax, and rabbit-tobacco, and Evax usually serves as larval food plants; however, other members of the family Asteraceae are sometimes utilized as well.

- The caterpillars are nearly as colorful and intricately marked as the adults. Velvety black, they have a series of narrow transverse yellow bands and a pair of silver-white dpots on each abdominal segment. There are four rows of branching black spines, each spine arising from a broad red space. Some mature larvaevpupate within their shelter; others transforn into hanging pupae on a nearby twig or stem. The chrysalis may be either pale gray with greenish brown markings or golden green marked with purplish brown.

- The adult American painted lady flies nearly year-round but seems most abundant in spring and fall. A hardy species, it hibernates as an adult and may appear on warm winter days to bask in the sun.

-

- Scientific name: Ascia monuste

- Also known as Southern white

- Description: Larger than the checkered and cabbage whites, the male great southern white is pure white with jagged, scalloped black margins. The hindwings beneath are creamy yellow. Females are dimorphic, with a much darker form emerging during the longer days of spring and summer. It is heavily clouded with black scaling both above and below. The late fall form resembles the white male, but with more black on the margins and a dark spot on the forewing.

- Size: 1.75- 2.5 inches.

- Range: The great southern white, as its name implies, is a southern species that ranges accross much of tropical America. It occurs commonly throughout the year in the Rio Grande Valley and in Florida and then expands northward along the coasts in summer, breeding as it goes and generating new broods that will not survive the winter. It also reaches far inland on occasion.

- The larvae and resulting adults are apparently distasteful to many predators because of the assimilation of strong mustard oils and thus join a large group of white butterflies similarly protected. Their common color and pattern are an example of a phenomenon called Millerian mimicry, in which a number of protected species evolve a common appearance so that predators more quickly learn to avoid them.

- Most abundant in the salt marshes and coastal dunes, the larvae of the great southern white feed on saltwort and sea-rocket, also called beach cabbage. Inland, they consume Virginia peppergrass and a wide variety of other plants in the mustard family. They may also infest cultivated cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, radish, and nasturtium.

- The caterpillars vary greatly in color, but are usually yellow or orange with stripes of dark gray or purplish green.

- The migration of the great southern white have been documented in detail. The flights apparently take place in response to crowding. Females mate soon after emerging, and the migration usually start at nine or ten o'clock the following morning. Some mass flights last only a few hours, but others continue for as long as ten hours the first day and se eral hours the next, ranging as far as one hundrerd miles. The butterflies fly steadily along, rarely stopping to feed at flowers. They appear to follow natural routes such as beaches and roads, but not all strike off in the same direction. Once a route is selected, however, the migrants follow it faithfully, flying from three to ten feet above the ground.

- Not all individuals migrate. Some merly disperse locally, while others strike out for new territory. Reaching their distination, the females lay their yellow, spindle-shaped eggs singly or in groups on the leaves of an appropiate food plant. Adapted to a beach or salt-marsh environment, those eggs can tolerate short immersions in salt water.

- Tagging studdies show that adult males ormally live about five days, while females live eight to ten days. By that time, however, they have left another generation, perhaps to continue the annual dispersal farther north.