Silvery Checkerspot Butterfly (Chlosyne nycteis)


Silvery Checkerspot Butterfly on Rudbekia 7/25/2020
Silvery Checkerspot Butterfly
 on Rudbeckia 7/25/2020

While watering and weeding yesterday (we are dry!), I noticed this lovely fellow on the Rudbeckia in the garden bed where I was working.  I managed to get several shots really close up, so it's a pretty good image, even with my crappy phone camera.

I used the Arkansas Butterflies page on ButterflyIdentification.org to get a lead on the species of butterfly.  The first info they shared about the Silvery Checkerspot is that it loves Black-Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia), so I was certain I had found the right butterfly.  I then verified it against my butterfly field guide (Butterflies of North America by John Feltwell with illustrations by Brian Hargreaves).  What a lovely name, and I know what to call it now!  No more "little orange and black butterfly!"  Learning about the species that we live with is what this project is all about.  Treating everything with the respect of learning its name and using it opens up a whole new world right outside my back door.

As an added bonus, when I Googled the Silvery Checkerspot in Arkansas, I found an entry that Talya Tate Boerner wrote back in 2018 at her blog Grace, Grits, and Gardening about the Silvery Checkerspot caterpillars in her Fayetteville garden.  I've gotten to know Talya through the book club we both belong to, and I admire her gumption to follow a long-term dream of becoming a writer. She writes in this blog post about becoming a Master Naturalist.  That's on my Retirement Possibilities List, and I can hardly wait!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buttonweed (Diodia virginiana)

Image
Buttonweed in lawn 8/10/2020 This project is all about LEARNING about and NAMING the life I see every day, so I've chosen Buttonweed, a tiny wildflower that is currently blooming in my lawn.  It would be easy to walk by it and step on it and never even take note of it, as I have doubtlessly been doing for the 26 years we have lived on Salem Road. Now, "lawn" is a lofty term for the grass in our yard, as I strictly share my daddy's attitudes about lawns -- water, fertilizer, and pesticides (insecticides or herbicides) are for crops, not grass.  We're not farming grass here.  And science agrees that we need to stop treating lawns like crops. Steven and I are extremely sparing in our use of pesticides here on Salem Road anyway, as we are concerned for our pollinators.  And our "lawn" is a laissez faire mixture of pasture grasses and weeds.  One of my goals is to move it more toward a natural lawn that supports our native species of plants and animals, but ...
Read more

Gray Treefrog (Hyla versicolor)

Image
Gray treefrog on corn leaf  6/26/2020 Friday's garden work turned up this gray treefrog taking shelter on a corn plant in the vegetable garden.  Thanks to my friend Robin for identifying him and turning me on to Herps of Arkansas as a solid source for help with Arkansas reptiles and amphibians. Check out the gray treefrog entry there to hear his song. He (U of Michigan's Animal Diversity Web notes there is no sexual dimorphism) hung out on the same corn plant for much of the day. The gray treefrog likes a wet home, so perhaps my weekly watering of the vegetable garden attracted him to this spot.  I discovered him in the late morning, and he was still around in the evening when I pointed him out to Steven.  Amanda got a look in the early afternoon, and all agreed that seeing him was a special treat!
Read more

Red-Spotted Purple Admiral Butterfly (Limenitis arthemis astyanax)

Image
Red-Spotted Purple Admiral Butterfly on Barn Floor  9/18/2020 We have lots of these Red-Spotted Purple Admiral Butterflies around the place, and most of them seem a bit worse for the wear.  I went searching to find out how butterflies get injured.  I wasn't really successful, but I did learn that you can replace a broken butterfly wing with a similar wing from a dead butterfly.  Who knew?  
Read more