Australia was great, but arriving home in the middle of a Texas spring--after rain--I went crazy with the camera this week. Flowers, butterflies, odd bugs, dragonflies, more flowers, wild and garden both. No way they could all fit on one page with a reasonable download time.
Here's a small example of what kept luring me out of the house. This small area was solid wildflowers: the tiny pink and lavender are Drummond wild onion...a favorite of early spring butterflies. Also in the picture are bluebonnets, Texas cranesbill, blue vervain, bur clover, and three different kinds of yellow flowers--a crucifer (gorgeous bladderpod) and two composites. Oh, and a monarch butterfly.
In the warmer weather, a gray hairstreak opened its wings more than those I saw a few weeks ago, giving a glimpse of its upper wing surface. In some lights it looks bluish, sometimes gray.	Red admirals are versatile in their tastes; last fall I photographed some sucking sap from a tree. But this spring they are going after the Drummond wild onion flowers, like most of the other butterflies.
Four-spotted Checkered Beetles are more often reported on pyracantha and other rose-family plants...but this one went for the Drummond wild onion...a very pale clump of it.
The Checkered White, Pontia protodice, is a new species for the place--at least, this is the first year I've been able to photograph it and look it up. It looks brilliant white against the pink and purple and blue flowers, but in the photographs you can see the gray markings on the upper wing.
Vesta Crescents, Phyciodes vesta, were flying late into the fall last year; I photographed a pair down by the creek in November. They showed up a few weeks back, and are the only crescent I'm finding right now.	In bright sunlight, against clumps of pink and purple flowers, an American lady is as bright and beautiful a butterfly as you could hope to see.
The other "white" butterfly I'm seeing a lot of this spring is the white-form female of the Orange Sulphur, Colias eurytheme, here nectaring on bluecurl. They normally perch with wings folded tight, making the top of the wings hard to see.	The same individual, fluttering rapidly as it came to the flowers, gave me a split second to catch the top. It's unusual because the dark border on the top of the forewing isn't a solid band, as it is in the orange/yellow form, but has "bubbles" of white. Yet it's clearly a Sulphur, as the eye and antennae color, and the faint green cast of the underneath, shows.

Butterflies   |   Water

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