Tag: skipper butterfly (Page 1 of 2)

Sunflowers For Bees, Birds, and Butterflies

Every year a small patch of wild sunflowers pops up in my front yard.  And every year I’m amazed at how many living things use them for food and shelter. Take last week:

One flower had this teeny, tiny praying mantis nymph.

This flower was so popular, it had a skipper butterfly and a digger bee. Can you see the bee?

Every morning a small flock of lesser goldfinches hang from the sunflower seed heads, pulling out the seeds. I have never gotten a good photo or video, but this is what they look like:

 

The birds drop and scatter enough seeds so that next year there’s sure to be another patch of sunflowers sprouting up.

Do you grow sunflowers?  What visitors do you see?

Bug of the Week: Skipper Butterfly Perching

What’s happening on the rush milkweed this week?

No caterpillars yet, but we do have a butterfly.

Recognize this little guy? He has antennae with hooks at the tips and oddly folded wings, so he is a skipper.

Any idea what he may be doing? Let’s look from another angle.

This is a flower bud, so he isn’t feeding. I don’t know if you can tell, but he’s positioned so his back is to the sun.

I caught him on several other plants in the same orientation. If it had been a cool morning, I might have suspected he was warming up. However, the temperature is currently in the high 80s Fahrenheit.

It turns out male skippers have dark patches on their wings called androconial scales that release pheromones to attract females. This male is perching and displaying.

This photograph doesn’t show it well. You can see the bands on the wings better by scrolling down to the skipper section in this butterfly wing anatomy article.

I also wonder if the teal green color on the thorax might be of significance.

Skipper larvae feed on grass. In our neighborhood more and more of the grass lawns are being replaced with artificial turf, which is good in the desert because it requires less water, but unfortunate for skippers.

Bug of the Week: Butterfly Season

Arizona’s seasons are often out of sync, especially in the Sonoran Desert. When everyone else is shutting down and getting ready for fall and winter, our wildlife is gearing up. A few weeks ago, we featured some insect eggs. Now we have caterpillars and chrysalids galore.

queen-caterpillar-small

Take this larva of a queen butterfly resting on a rush milkweed. It is taking advantage of the new growth the plants are putting out after recent rains.

queen-chrysalis-003Some of the faster developing larvae have already transformed into chrysalids. They will soon be adult queen butterflies.

skipper-on-cordiaThe skipper butterflies have already reached adulthood and are ready to lay eggs again.

Check out this post by Margarethe Brummermann who says there were 28 species of butterflies (as well as other insects) in Madera Canyon this week. She also posted an amazing video on Flickr.

 What insects did you see this week?

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