Beautiful Gulf Fritillary or "Passion" Butterfly - bright orange catches your eye and the 3 little white dots on each fore-wing are the clincher. Watch for a guest appearance by a spider!
The Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae (Linnaeus), is a brightly colored butterfly common across extreme southern portions of the United States. At home in most open, sunny habitats, it frequents roadsides, disturbed sites, fields, open woodlands, pastures, yards, and parks. It is a regular in most butterfly gardens, including those in more urban settings.
The Gulf fritillary occurs throughout the southern United States southward through Mexico, Central America and the West Indies to South America. In Florida, it can be found in all 67 counties. The butterfly undergoes distinct seasonal movements each year. Adults move northward in spring and form temporarily breeding colonies throughout the southeast. Individual vagrants may occasionally reach into the central U.S., but rarely into the Midwest. Starting in late summer and continuing through fall, huge numbers of adults migrate southward into peninsular Florida. Adults overwinter in frost-free portions of their range.
Adult: The Gulf fritillary is a medium-sized butterfly with elongated forewings. Adults have a wingspan range of 65 to 95 mm. Females are generally larger than males. The sexes are dimorphic. The upper surface of the wings is bright orange with black markings. Females are somewhat darker and more extensively marked. The forewing cell contains three black-rimmed white spots. The undersides of the wings are brown with elongated silvery-white spots.
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/bfly/gulf_fritillary.htm
Male Queen Butterfly (Danaus gilippus) with the two dark upper wing spots - or pheromone scales. Queen butterflies are cousins of Monarch butterflies and similar to Soldier Butterflies. The Queen's are year-round residents of Florida, but my experience has been they are not that common to see and equally as beautiful as the Monarchs. Both use milkweed (Asclepias species) as host plants.
Queen butterflies are not like ants and termites, the ones that lay the eggs. ‘Queen’ is simply the name of this species of butterfly. There are both male and female Queen butterflies. Like Monarchs, male Queens have a black spot on each hindwing. These black dots are pheromone scales. Although Monarch butterflies do not use pheromones during courtship and mating, Queen butterflies do use pheromones.
Monarch Butterflies heading south on their Fall migration pass through the vast forested Great Smoky Mountains looking for isolated meadows with wildflowers to refuel. It is getting late for this area as most wildflowers at higher elevations are dead, but I managed to spot three in an hour on October 12th. Monarch Butterflies are under considerable environmental pressure and in danger of disappearing. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has a Monarch banding program. More information at the links below: http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/Monarch_Butterfly/migration/index.shtml http://www.gsmit.org/CSMonarchTagging.html
Relaxing, soothing, and healing feast for the eyes and ears - Monarch Butterflies feeding on purple thistle on their annual migration to Mexico set to ambient music. No loops, static images or repeats - this is 20+ minutes of original migrating Monarch Butterfly videos set to an outstanding ambient soundtrack. Filmed on October 20th, 2015 at 3,500 feet in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina this is very late for Monarchs to be passing through - and they are hungry. I noticed a patch of thistle on the roadside with just a few blooms left, all other fall wildflowers were dead, this became a migrating Monarch Butterfly magnet! Enjoy, relax and contemplate the healing power of the Monarch of Butterflies.......
The outstanding soundtrack is credited to:
Ambiment - The Ambient by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
A Zebra Longwing Butterfly - the State Butterfly of Florida - makes a rare appearance in the backyard. It is aptly named as it has distinct Zebra stripes and extra long "wing extensions" beyond what would normally be symmetrical for a butterfly. It also has notably red accents. It is more common in south Florida and especially the Everglades.Sitting on a leaf of the invasive Brazilian Pepper Tree it is warming up and getting ready to start its day. Our resident nesting Great Crowned Flycatchers are likely to make a quick meal of this beauty.
Video: Butterflies can't resist the "Butterfly Bush"
Butterflies can't resist the "Butterfly Bush"
Tiger Swallowtails, Pipevine Swallowtails and a few other butterfly species find this "Butterfly Bush" irresistible. Perhaps due to all the rain, we have a bumper crop of blossoms and the late summer butterflies that feed on them! The Tiger Swallowtail in the photo above is the State Butterfly of North Carolina!
Relaxing! Only a solitary Milk Thistle blossom within a large area of many plants emerged a few days ago and it was quickly found by a large number of hungry Pipevine Swallowtail Butterflies and bees leading to a rare and beautiful feeding frenzy. All thistle is generally considered an invasive weed, but Milk Thistle is not unattractive due to its large colorful blossoms and is a choice food for butterflies. The extract of the dried seeds is purported to be good for the liver.
