Anglewings are among the last butterflies abroad in fall and the first in spring. Adults spend the winter tucked into spaces called hibernacula—cracks and crevices in rock piles and tree bark or under eaves. Summer and winter adults have somewhat different coloration; the top surface of the hind wing is more uniformly dark in the summer butterflies,
Viceroy butterflies enjoy shrubby and open fields and wet meadows throughout the U.S. They’re less common in the Great Plains, north into Canada and south into central Mexico.
Three small, blue “look-alike” butterflies—the Spring Azure and the Summer Azure, often referred to as the Spring Spring Azure and the Summer Spring Azure, and the Eastern Tailed Blue. The Spring Azures have long been considered to be one large and gloriously diverse species made up of several sub-species. Now they’re thought by many to be a number of full species. Ten or eleven species of Blues/Azures occur in Wisconsin.
The American Lady a year-round resident of the southern U.S. (south into South America and even the Galapagos), its summer wanderings bring it here to God’s country. Like the Painted Lady, it likes sunny, open spaces, and like the Painted Lady, it is an early migrant from the south that re-establishes populations in the North and East annually (it was recorded in Wisconsin in the first week of May this year). Unlike the Painted Lady, its caterpillars are tied to a smaller list of host plants, including the everlastings and pussytoes, and a few other species.
Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) feed on a variety of flowers but lay their eggs only on plants in the milkweed family. The bright, aposematic (warning) colors of both the butterfly and its caterpillar alert potential predators to back off (poisonous milkweed sap renders the caterpillar toxic, and it carries its toxicity into adulthood).
Red Admiral butterflies (Vanessa atalanta) belong to the largest butterfly family, the Nymphalidae or Brush-footed butterflies. There are two broods of RAs per summer in most of the north, and there are two “forms”—a slightly smaller and less flashy winter form and a larger, more intensely-colored summer form.
Silvery Checkerspots are in the brushfoot family Nymphalidae, which is the biggest butterfly family with about 6,000 species (209 in North America. As the common name Streamside Checkerspot suggests, this species likes damp meadows, marshes, roadsides, open woods and stream edges, but it also likes areas of disturbed, poor, or sandy soil.
Wisconsin has two common species of dark swallowtails—the Black Swallowtail and the dark morph female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail—and we host two dark species that are uncommon strays, the Pipevine and the Spicebush Swallowtail. The latter two are drifters whose caterpillar food plants are not native to Wisconsin. The natural habitats for this lovely wanderer include fields, parks, gardens, dappled woods, and edges from Central America through the southern U.S.
It’s time again for the Annual “Twelve Bugs of Christmas” event (and, coincidentally, episode #350 in the series, by the BugLady’s numbering). Here are a (Baker’s) dozen insects that will not be getting (or who have already had) their own BOTWs. Feel free to hum along, and have a lovely Holiday.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtails have two broods/generations each summer here. The first brood, which is airborne in May and June, is small in number, comprised of butterflies who survived the winter and early spring as a pupae in chrysalises.