Meadow Frit and others

I finally managed to get out of the house and check out some butterflies this weekend.  Location?  All of these came from Lucas County and Appanoose County, both in southern Iowa.

I was most pleased to finally find a MEADOW FRITILLARY at Colyn SWA in Lucas County.  Turns out, I probably ended the day with 5-7.  Here is one:

It wasn't very surprising that FIERY SKIPPERS were common throughout the day:

Now that I'm actually looking more carefully at the pictures (as I make this blog)... I wonder if this skipper might actually be a Sachem?  I don't have much experience with Sachems unfortunately.  Any thoughts?

I almost wanted to make the following butterflies into European Skippers (a bfly I have yet to see) but logic got the best of me and I accepted the fact that they were just the common LEAST SKIPPERS.  Apparently European Skippers don't fly this late in the season here.   

I absolutely loved the evening light while photographing various sulphurs & yellows at Sedan Bottoms.  I was amazed at how the yellow in these guys just seemed to pop out with the right light.  Here is a LITTLE YELLOW: 

Is the LITTLE YELLOW actually little?  Well, stick one of the giant sulphurs in front of it!

Overall, it was a fairly productive day for butterflies even though my target was actually finding birds.  Although I didn't keep track of what I saw, I'll put down the species I had and in order from most abundant to rarest (for the day):

Common Buckeye
Clouded/Orange Sulphur
Black Swallowtail
Eastern Tailed-Blue
Monarch
Pearl Crescent
Little Yellow
Fiery Skipper
Meadow Fritillary
Least Skipper
Viceroy
Eastern Tiger-Swallowtail
Painted Lady
Red Admiral

Cabbage White

Question Mark
Red-spotted Purple
Gray Hairstreak
Sachem?

The Sulphur from SE AZ

No takers on this sulphur?  Fine, I'll just have to make a fool of myself!!

But if you weren't around earlier... I took a picture of this sulphur while in southeast Arizona last August.  I initially tried ID'ing it but eventually gave up.

A couple features that stand out to me are the dark edges to the FW above (that we can see through the underside of the FW), and the rather blunt tail on the HW.

If I'm not mistaken, the only "tailed" members of this family present in SE Arizona would be:

Yellow Angled-Sulphur
Mexican Yellow
Boisduval's Yellow
Sleepy Orange
Tailed Orange

It's clearly not the large, greenish Yellow Angled-Sulphur, of that I'm sure!

Another thing to point out is the shape of the black that's on the FW above.  I don't see the classic "dogface" that would be present on all Mexican Yellows and male Boisduval's Yellow.

Sleepy Orange should surely have a deeper orange flush to the underside and more markings than this butterfly, right?  Also, all the pictures I've seen of Sleepy Oranges show a more blunt, rounded tail than our butterfly shows.

Likewise, I feel that Tailed Orange would be both a) oranger at this season and b) have a more blunt tail.

This leaves me with where I left off last time; confused!  Perhaps this is a worn female Boisduval's?  I feel that the picture in the Kaufman guide for Boisduval's shows a tail very similar to mine.

Any clues out there?

Fiery & Yellows

While below the dam at Saylorville earlier today, I noticed 10+ skippers bopping around an area of mowed grass.  Upon closer inspection, I found that they were FIERY SKIPPERS:  

For more info on where exactly I had them, see the below map:

View Fiery Skippers in a larger map

It was only last September that I saw my very first Fiery Skipper up at Jester Park (thanks Aaron).  The ones last September perched nicely with wings open though, something I didn't see today.  Here is one from last fall:  

Then later today near Jester Park, I noticed a swarm of smaller "sulphur things".  The first perched one I saw was this ratty individual.  I was certain it was a LITTLE YELLOW:

And yes, alas, I managed to find another less-ratty butterfly actually perched.  Clearly they were all LITTLE YELLOWS, probably 10-20 individuals:

Sulphur stumbling

I will admit, sometimes I stumble on a butterfly, try to ID it, get frustrated, and then leave it for a later time.  Well, that later time is now.  Anyone out there with any ideas about this sulphur I photographed in southeast Arizona early last August???  I clearly was overloaded with other, easier to ID, species!

Fritillary folly?

Sometimes I wonder why I venture into ID's that are way over my head.  Well, I don't mind making a fool of myself and I have to learn somehow, right?

With that in mind, I turn to a fritillary I photographed in the Black Hills of South Dakota last weekend.  Here are just a couple quick pictures:

Ok, I may as well start with just a list of "greater" fritillaries that my two books (I'm a beginner, remember?) show as occurring in western South Dakota.  I get:

Great Spangled Fritillary

Regal Fritillary

Coronis Fritillary

Aphrodite Fritillary

Atlantis Fritillary

Edward's Fritillary

Callippe Fritillary

Let's look at the eye color of our mystery butterfly:

If I dare to make the point that the eyes are NOT dull yellow-green, that excludes both Great Spangled and Aphrodite Fritillaries.  For example, here is a Great Spangled from Iowa:

That leaves us with:

Regal Fritillary

Coronis Fritillary

Atlantis Fritillary

Edward's Fritillary

Callippe Fritillary

For a lot of obvious reasons (I think), it's safe to say that this isn't a Regal Fritillary.  Namely the lack of a dark HW and darker black margins on the FW above.  Here is a Regal from Iowa for comparison :

Now we're stuck with:

Coronis Fritillary

Atlantis Fritillary

Edward's Fritillary

Callippe Fritillary

As you can see from the following picture, our mystery butterfly doesn't have a "strong green reflection" on the underside of the hindwing.  This should exclude Callippe; the population in Colorado has green HW disks whereas the more western populations get tougher.  The lack of this "green reflection" on the underside especially excludes Edwards':

Further narrowing down our possibilities, we're left with:

Coronis Fritillary

Atlantis Fritillary

I guess this is officially where I get very lost.  I'm not sure, but from what I can tell, Atlantis Fritillary is supposed to have fairly heavy black markings on the upperwing, including thicker hindwing margins and thicker, "swollen" wing veins.  I don't see this on our mystery fritillary:  

       

I also think the HW marginal spots are more rounded than tent-shaped, another point towards Coronis: 

Lastly, a couple other minor things make me lean towards Coronis as well.  First, Coronis is said to have a flight season of late-May through early-September.  Contrastingly, Atlantis is said to be "mostly" around in July (although there is a lot of slop to that).  Lastly, most range maps just put a dot in the Black Hills for Atlantis Fritillary whereas Coronis is shown to be more widely distributed in that part of the state.

Lastly, any thoughts?  I'd be very pleased if someone who knows these fritillaries better to correct me if I'm wrong.

Pearl Crescent... I assume

I was rather lazy with this crescent/checkerspot out in western South Dakota.  I suppose it's just a PEARL CRESCENT but I have yet to be able to ID these quickly from above.  Any quick/easy methods?