December insects in Austin

It was another 70° day in Austin, and it brought out some butterflies and a few dragonflies. The dragonflies were taking the opportunity to mate. Dragonfly sex is weird (though perhaps no weirder than anyone else's). The male clasps the female behind the head with hooks at the tip of his abdomen, and the female reaches up with the tip of her abdomen, where she is keeping her eggs, and fertilizes the eggs at the male sex organs at the bottom of his thorax.

Variegated meadowhawks mating



And here is a view of a common buckeye butterfly, active on a warm December day...


...and here's another


click any photo for larger view

Excuses

I have been busy with various retirement-type projects, including continued scanning of old photographs--we accumulated more than I can reasonably digitize in one lifetime--plus sporadic transcription of my wife's diaries for my daughter and stepdaughter (given my typing speed and the difficulty of Kay's handwriting, I will have to live to be 104 like my grandmother to have any hope of finishing). Plus I go birdwatching and nature-photographing almost daily. All this by way of an excuse as to why I have been neglecting this blog. Sadly, the neglect will probably continue for a while, though I hope to put up an occasional photo, like the monarch butterfly, below, that I found flitting around in some dry grass yesterday, down by Onion Creek. I was surprised to see it. We still have butterflies, but I thought the monarchs were gone.

Monarch butterfly



We had a great Thanksgiving, BTW--Eve was home from grad school, and my mother drove up from New Braunfels, and we had about 20 friends over as well. I think everyone had a good time, as I did.

More November butterflies, and a hermit thrush

A red admiral, Vanessa atalanta, in the afternoon sun at the Onion Creek greenbelt



A variegated fritillary, Euptoieta claudia, also in the greenbelt



Another view of the frit



This hermit thrush was left staring warily at me, occasionally flicking its wings, after the tree full of robins I had been stealthily approaching (I should put stealthily in quotes) exploded in alarm--actually, it was three separate salvos of robins, 15 or 20 each I guess, launched about half a second apart, rocketing through half-bare November hackberry branches as I fumbled with my camera. Damn, I thought, so much for stealth. But the hermit thrush was still there, nervous, wondering what I was doing down there, but unwilling to leave.


click any photo to enlarge

Saturday random juxtapositions

Onion Creek Baldcypress trees. This is at the upper McKinney Falls. Some years the cypress trees provide a bit of fall color.



A ruby-crowned kinglet also near Onion Creek



Roseate skimmer, Orthemis ferruginea. These are very handsome dragonflies. I took the photo several days ago, in Zilker Park.



Yet another American snout butterfly, Libytheana carinenta. They are amazingly abundant around Austin this fall. No one knows why, really. This one has obligingly, and uncharacteristically, opened its wings. Generally they keep their wings folded and look like dead gray leaves.


Click any photo to enlarge

November butterflies

We have not yet had a freeze in Austin, and we have some fall flowers after the recent rains. So we still have lots of butterflies. The most common are American snouts, which which I have uploaded photos of before. Here are some other species.

A gulf fritillary, Agraulis vanillae



Another view of the same butterfly



This is a theona checkerspot, Chlosyne theona



A phaon crescent, Phyciodes phaon


Both the phaon and the checkerspot are flitting around in some small white aster flowers.



(click any image to enlarge)

Poorly matched photos

It seems odd to put these two photos up in the same post. What they have in common is that I saw both these guys on my walk today along Onion Creek, and that they both let me get very close. The reason I got close to the mestra was that it was cold and hence inactive. I don't know why I was able to approach so close to the vulture. Sometimes they are reluctant to abandon their meal, but this one was not feeding on anything.

Common mestra, Mestra amymone. I mentioned in another post that blogger somehow muted the colors of a previous photo of this same species of butterfly. This one looks a little better.



Black vulture. Vultures are more closely related to storks than to birds of prey. You can kind of see that here.


click photos to enlarge

A few Sunday close-ups

An orange sulphur butterfly, Colias eurytheme, on an unidentified salvia near my house



Two views of a common mestra, Mestra amymone, near Slaughter Creek in South Austin

Partial ventral view of the mestra's wings


Dorsal view



Variegated meadowhawk, Sympetrum corruptum, also near Slaughter Creek


Click photos to enlarge

Tuesday photo miscellany

Today I am afraid I will disappoint those visitors who come to this blog hoping for political diatribes, startling anecdotes, unfair and unbalanced philosophical viewpoints, or simply gossip. Maybe later.

As is usual lately, I've been out taking photographs. Unlike political blogging, nature photography works to keep the cortisol situation outside the danger zone. Here is a photo miscellany from the past few days.

Western ribbon snake, Thamnophis proximus. This species is highly variable. Our central Texas variety usually has a red stripe down the back, as this one does.



Fiery skipper, Hylephila phyleus, on a Palafoxia flower.



Black vulture landing at a vulture roost in the middle of Landa Park in New Braunfels, Texas. The roost is on an island in a small lake fed by Comal Springs, the largest natural spring in the state. It's quite a beautiful setting for a vulture roost. Cormorants and red-tail hawks also like it.



Turkey vulture overhead near Onion Creek



The damselfly that I mentioned in an earlier post, that I could not identify. I am reasonably certain it is a smoky rubyspot, Hetaerina titia. This species is also highly variable in appearance. I took a photo of one in Belize that was much darker.


Click any photo to enlarge

Dragonfly at Hornsby Bend, and another butterfly photo

It was a lovely day today as I walked along the river at Hornsby Bend, and I saw my first red-tailed pennant, a fairly spectacular dragonfly which--as the name implies--has a bright red tail. I also took a couple of photos of a damselfly I can't identify, and maybe I will put up a photo of it if I ever do identify it.

Red-tailed Pennant, Brachymesia furcata



There were thousands of snout butterflies out, mating, hanging around, maybe migrating--I am not sure about that. They have colorful wings, in flight, but normally when they land they keep their wings folded, and they look like dead leaves. I was trying to get pictures of the dead-leaf pose, and just as I snapped the shutter, the butterfly flew away, and I caught it in flight. So here's a rare photo--for me--of an American snout, Libytheana carinenta, in the air.


Click to enlarge

Friday butterfly blogging

A white peacock, Anartia jatrophae, on the banks of the Guadalupe River in New Braunfels, Texas. This is a tropical butterfly, here at the northern end of its normal range, though individuals will occasionally wander much farther northward.


Click to enlarge

Wednesday wildlife at Hornsby Bend

Hornsby Bend is a bend in the Colorado River near Austin named after an early settler, Rueben Hornsby, who built a log house nearby. It's presently the site of several large sewage treatment ponds, and is a premier place to go birdwatching--but mainly in the winter, when the smelly ponds are full of ducks. There are several miles of trails along the river and in the woods near the sewage ponds.

I went there to take pictures of dragonflies. I didn't see many, but I did get shots of a couple of black saddlebags, plus a butterfly and a snake. And it was a nice day for a walk.


Black Saddlebags (Tramea lacerata)



Another black saddlebags



Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, (Papilio glaucus), on a lantana flower



Eastern Yellowbelly Racer, (Coluber constrictor flaviventris)


(click any photo to enlarge)

Recent close-ups

This is a giant swallowtail Papilio cresphontes, which landed in deep shade a few feet from me as I walked along Slaughter Creek.



This is a tiny brown butterfly, most likely a fatal metalmark (Calephelis nemesis) or possibly a Rawson's metalmark (Calephelis rawsoni). They can only be told apart in the field if you have a ventral view of the hindwing, and since it was disinclined to fold its wings and I was unable to get below a butterfly on the ground, I am guessing this is the more common of the two species, C. nemesis. I don't know why it's called a fatal metalmark. A brief search on the web shed no light on the matter.



Here is a blue dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) which has almost worn out its wings. I like blue dashers not only because they are nice looking dragonflies but because it's easy to take pictures of them, and they also assume nice poses occasionally.



This damselfly is a tough one to identify. I think it is a female dusky dancer, Argia translata, but females of Argia species are very hard to ID with certainty.



click on any photo to enlarge

This blog is going on vacation for two weeks, maybe three. Hasta entonces.

Monday miscellany

Here are two dragonflies on the same ragweed stalk. The top one is a halloween pennant, and the lower one an immature male roseate skimmer. I wish they had been close together so I could upload a bigger image, but I think this is about as close as they get--I suspect the skimmer had intentions of eating the pennant, which in fact flew away right after I took the shot.



Here's a tiger swallowtail on a buttonbush flower


(Click to enlarge)

I'll be back Friday