First Butterflies of the Year.

 Last week I saw my first butterflies of 2015. The timing is not much of a surprise. We usually start seeing butterflies as early as late March. What surprised me was the species. Typically my first butterfly of the year is either a mourning cloak or a comma. That is because both of these species overwinter as adult butterflies. As soon as it warms up they thaw out and begin to fly. The cabbage white overwinters as a chrysalis. They typically have three broods per year with the last brood overwintering in the pupae state. When it warms up they emerge and look for a partner to mate with.

Cabbage whites are a non native species here in North America. They were introduced to North America in the 1860's and have done very well for themselves. They are common in Europe, North Africa, and Asia where they are also called the large white. They are common here in the U.S. now, also. They are so common that when I first saw them I almost ignored them until I realized that they were my first butterfly of the year. Unfortunately I was on a walk during my lunch break at work and did not have a camera so no pics. The pics in this post were taken in the past during the middle of summer when thing are much more green and blooming then they are right now.

Happy BirthDay

Today, April 22, is Earth Day. It's a special day where we show our appreciation for the natural world and are more aware of the things that we need to do to preserve it.On Earth Day 2007 I began the Ecobirder Blog. During the past six years there have been good times and bad times, there have been days where I could not wait to share pictures and posts and days where it took almost every thing that I had to write a post for the day. During all this time many of you have visited often and left comments and encouragements for which I would like to thank you. With out you this blog would not be here. It has become kind of a tradition to share pics from the calendars that I make each year on this special day. So keeping with tradion here are the pictures from the 2013 Ecobirder Calendar. 

Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO

Ferruginous pygmy owl San Miguelito Ranch, Tx

 Altamira oriole at Bentsen State Park, Tx

Sandhill crane colt Necedah NWR, Wi

Western grebe Bosque del Apache, NM

Cabbage white butterfly River Bend Nature Center, MN

Red-headed woodpeckers Necedah NWR, Wi.

Gold-fronted woodpecker  Santa Ana NWR, Texas.

 Pied-billed grebe Crex Meadows, Wi

Black Bear Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary, MN

 Gulf Fritillary Santa Ana NWR, Texas.

 Sandhill cranes Boque del Apache, MN

Northern Saw-whet owl Dodge Nature Center, MN

Thanks for a great year!

Cabbage White

The cabbage white is a common site in most of the U.S. and Canada during the summer, however it is not a native species to North America. The cabbage white is a native of Europe, Great Britain, Asia and North Africa. It was accidentally introduced into Canada in 1860. By 1885 the cabbage white had extended its range across most of North America.
The cabbage white gets its common name from the fact that cabbage is one of the larval host plants. The larva will eat most species in the mustard family including cauliflower, radish, kale, broccoli and mustard greens as well as wild mustard species such as charlock. Because much of what the larva eats are cultivated crops, farmers often try to control their population with either chemical or microbial pesticides.

Cabbage White

Butterflies

Life for butterflies is hard here in Minnesota. The butterflies that live here need to find a way to survive the harsh winter climate. They accomplish this in a variety of different ways.
For example the eastern tailed-blue, pictured above, will over winter in its larval form. It will usually find a seed pod to crawl into for cover. When winter is over the caterpillar already has a food source at hand.

The cabbage white butterfly, on the other hand, survives winter in its pupae state. Because it has already begun to change over the winter we usually see these types of butterflies emerging from their chrysalis as early as the beginning of May. Other types of butterflies will over winter as eggs or as adult butterflies.

Butterflies on the Sand

Most of the time when you think of butterfly habitat you envision open fields full of blooming wild flowers or ornate flower gardens. These are good places to look for butterflies but another place to look, that most people do not think of, is the shore line of lakes, rivers and streams. Like most living things butterflies need to ingest minerals and one way to do this is to suck up the dissolved minerals in wet sand. In this first pic a male cabbage white is partaking of minerals from the sand. We can tell that it is a male because it has a single spot on the fore wing, females have two spots.
The eastern tailed-blue can be identified by the small "hair-like" tail that protrudes from the hind wing. The only other member of the blue family that has a tail is the western tailed-blue. To distinguish between the eastern and western varieties of tailed-blue look for the orange spots near the tail on the hind wing. If the blue has two orange spots then it is an eastern tailed-blue if it only has a single spot then it is a western tailed-blue. While we do not see many western-tailed blue in the southeastern part of Minnesota their range does overlap in the northern part of the state and into Canada.
The viceroy butterfly is a monarch look a like, however it is easy to distinguish the difference once you know what you are looking for. First off the viceroy is typically smaller then the monarch, with a 2.5 to 3.25 inch wingspan for the viceroy and a 3.5 to 4.5 inch wingspan for the monarch. This can be difficult to judge, however, unless you are lucky enough to see them both together. The easy way to tell the difference is to look at the hind wing. On the viceroy there is a line running across the hind wing which is not present in the monarch. All of these butterflies where photographed at Afton State Park in September of 2008.

Butterflies

During the summer, when the birding gets a little slow, I have turned to photographing other parts of nature. At the beginning of last September I found quite a few interesting butterflies to photograph. Even though the least skipper is pretty common in North America many people over look it due to its small size.

Even though the Cabbage White butterfly is a common sight around woods, roadsides, farms, gardens and yards it is actually not native to North America. They originally came from Europe and were accidentally released into Canada back in the 1860s.
It is easy to distinguish between the male and female cabbage white by the number of spots on the forewing. If the butterfly has one spot, such as the first picture, then it is male but if it has two on the forewing, as shown above, then it is a female..
The eastern-tailed blue is another small butterfly that can be found through out most of the eastern part of North America, from the eastern coast of Canada and The US west to North Dakota, Colorado and central Texas, as well as parts of Mexico and the West Coast.
The eastern-tailed blue is a member of the Gossamer-wing family of butterflies and can be identified by the long hair like tail on the hindwing for which it gets its name. The only other blue butterfly with a tail is its cousin the western-tailed blue which is a bit larger and lacks orange spots at the base of the hind wing.

Eastern-tailed blue butterflies have a number of different types of host plants. Since their proboscis, or feeding tube, is not very long they look for short tubed flowers or ones that are open. Favorites include white clover, white sweet clover, shepherd's needle, wild strawberry, flea-bane. asters, winter cress and others. In the picture above two eastern tail blue are using their proboscis to drink nectar from a birds-foot trefoil flower.

Wordless Wednesday: Cabbage White

Old Cedar Bugs

If you have been a constant visitor to Ecobirder you may have noticed that the number of posts featuring insects has decreased dramatically from a couple of months ago. That is because winter has arrived and early this year and days with high temps in the 30s are a bit of a problem for the insect community. So the only insects that I see these days are the occasional spider that Michelle, my wife, hollers about or once in a while a centipede that my kitten Misty is stalking with her mad bug pawning skillz. Don't worry though I am saving some bug picks to post through out the winter to continue to bring you as much variety as possible. One of the last time that I went out and photographed several insects was at the Old cedar Bridge area at the beginning of October (10-2).
All during the late summer and fall my bug photography was hampered by grasshoppers. Most of the places that I visited where filled with grasshoppers at that time of the year. As I would walk through the fields, or even down dirt paths, quietly stalking a butterfly or dragonfly grasshoppers would go flying from the grass in front of me. Like an early alert system they would startle my prey which would, very often, take off right before I got my shot.

Once in a while I would get lucky though and my subject would not notice the hoard of grasshoppers fleeing before my gigantic size twelve hiking boots. Like this cabbage white butterfly who was too intent on sucking the nectar out of this flower to notice my approach.
This eastern tailed blue did not even flinch when it came face to face with my 9" Canon zoom lens.

Woolly bear caterpillars are a sure sign of fall. During the falls months, like October, they quit their eating and look for a sheltered place to hibernate for the winter. When the temps warm up again and spring arrives the woolly bear will wake up and spin a cocoon. A couple of weeks later they will emerge as an isabella tiger moth.

Going Buggy at Afton State Park

Well this weekend turned out to be very nice weather wise here in Minnesota. Both days turned out to be sunny with mostly clear skies. The temps on both days got up into the mid sixties which is pretty good for late October. This afternoon while I was out enjoying the weather I spotted quite a few meadowhawks and a few large darners still lingering. I also spotted a monarch, most of them flew south weeks ago, as well as a sulfur and a couple of cabbage whites.
Back on September sixth there were quite a few butterflies around when I visited Afton State Park. Afton is located on the St Croix River a little ways north of where the St Croix joins with the Mississippi.
The reason that I went to Afton was to try and find some of the rare clubtail dragonflies that are only found around the St Croix River in Minnesota. but while searching for dragons I came across quite a few butterflies. Although the cabbage white is a common through out most of North America it is not actually a native to the continent. It was accidentally introduced from Europe into Canada in the 1860s. You can tell that this is a male cabbage white because it only has a single spot on the fore wing, females have two spots.

I also found a fairly good numbers of eastern tailed-blue butterflies. These are similar in size to the endangered Karner blue but they are much more common and are easily identified by the small tendril or tail projecting from the hind wing. The only other blue in our area with a tail is the western tailed-blue. You can tell the difference because the eastern has two or more orange spots near the tail where the western has only a single orange spot. We see a lot more eastern tailed-blue.
At first glance I thought this next butterfly was a monarch but when I was able to examine it more closely I realised that it was a monarch copycat.
The viceroy resembles the monarch, which is toxic to most predators because of the milkweed it eats when it is a caterpillar, this helps it to avoid predators. Viceroys are noticeably smaller then monarchs and have a stripe running across the hind wing that the monarch does not have.
I did find one dragon that appears to be a clubtail. Unfortunately I was only able to get off a couple of quick shots before it flew off across the water where I could not follow. It was not a very great picture but I think that it may be a russet-tipped clubtail, possibly one that only recently emerged. There is only one record of Russet-tipped clubtails in Minnesota and that was in Houston County on the far south east tip of the state, according Odonata Central. Hopefully this information is up to date and correct, if not I am sure that Hap will let me know. I have also found other dragons that I believe were russet-tipped clubtails down at Carpenter Nature Center, which is also on the St Croix River a little south of Afton. I plan to make a photo set and send it to the Minnesota Odonata Survey Project. If I am correct with my identification,hopefully they will be able to tell from the photos, then perhaps the russet-tipped clubtail will get added to the species checklist for Washington County.

Bass Ponds Butterflies

After my scolding by the angry catbird at the Bass Ponds, I decided to go find something that was a little less noisy to photograph. Fortunately I was able to find some butterflies around the ponds that I was able to photograph in peace and quiet.

This first photo, I believe, is of a least skipper. I still have a very difficult time identifying the different skippers. Most of them are very small and there are little differences distinguishing several types.
I think that this small one is an European skipper. According to my Kaufman Guide to Butterflies of North America, the European skipper was accidentally introduced into North America at Ontario, Canada back in 1910. Since its introduction its range has spread to include most of the North Eastern and North Central US as well as much of Eastern Canada.
The cabbage white is one of the most common butterflies seen in North America. It ranges through most of the US and Canada. Last year there were a lot of white cabbage butterflies around and so it was not that big of a deal to get a pic. This year though I have not seen nearly as many so I was a bit more excited about getting a pic.
Butterflies have 4 different stages of life. Life for the monarch butterfly begins as a tiny white egg which is typically laid on the underside of a milkweed leaf. The egg hatches 3 to 6 days from the day which is laid and a tiny Caterpillar emerges. The caterpillar will feed on nothing but milkweed leaves for 9 to 14 days. As it feeds it grows pretty quickly. To accommodate their rapid growth the caterpillar will shed its skin 5 times, each time the older smaller skin will peal away with a new larger skin waiting underneath. When it reaches its mature size, about 2 inches long, it will leave the milkweed and look for a safe place to form is pupae or chrysalis.
Many people know that monarchs fly south for the winter like birds do, either to the mountains of Central Mexico or the Southern California coast, but many people may not be aware that unlike birds it is not the same monarchs that return the following spring. During the summer monarch butterflies live about 2 to 5 weeks before they die. The last generation of the summer gather together and, as the temps get colder, they begin the long migration to traditional wintering grounds that they have never seen before. On their wintering grounds they cluster together in colonies in a hibernated state to preserve their energy. As the temps begin to warm up with spring the monarchs come to life and begin the migration to the north. They do not go very far however. At this point they are 7 to 8 months old and near to expiring. So they mate and lay eggs. This new generation follows through the life cycle and then as butterflies continue to move north. After their 2 to 5 weeks of life this generation dies, but not before laying the eggs for the next generation, which will continue to move north. This continues with each successive generation moving further north until the end of summer then the cycle begins again with the last generation migrating south.