Identificaciones de nlrudr

Black-dotted Maliattha Moth (Maliattha synochitis)

2 April 2017
Medina River Natural Area
San Antonio, Béxar County, Texas

Note: This was an exceptional park and/or natural area. Our tree and shrub IDs were obtained from the extensive educational markers found at the site. Lots of thought and resources went into making sure that the ninety-some educational markers found throughout the site occur naturally where the trees and shrubs that are described are part of the existing landscape. The Medina River Natural Area is administered by the City of San Antonio, Texas.

Black-dotted Maliattha Moth (Maliattha synochitis) is found throughout the eastern half of North America including Canada, United States, and Mexico. This specimen was observed perched next to the part of the trail closest to the Medina River. A total of 202 species of “Butterflies and Moths” have been identified for Bexar County, Texas, to date but this is the first iNat record for this moth species in Bexar County: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2685&taxon_id=47157&view=species

Source: Black-dotted Maliattha Moth (Maliattha synochitis), BugGuide: http://bugguide.net/node/view/1247816/bgimage

Viceroy Butterfly (Limenitis archippus)

2 September 2015: With the Labor Day Weekend nearly here it was appropriate to return to the Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center (CCNHC) for a three-mile hike around the horn taking us first on the Wetlands Trail thence to the Fisherman’s Trail for the complete loop around the 1,900-acre nature preserve that is one of the often unnoticed crown jewels of the City of Denton, Texas’s park properties which are many and rightly so. We’d not returned to the CCNHC since around the first or second of May earlier in the year when the skies opened up clear across Texas and poured their bounty of rain day after day lasting for an amazing entire month of what amounted eventually to something in the order of about eight inches of rain averaged across the state, and it’s a big one as we know. That’s what we recall reading in the newspapers. Here, in the North Texas region, the rainfall had to have been much more and in effect it was though what the rainfall gauge read after the weeks-long deluge escapes our knowledge presently. So not only was this true of the CCNHC but of all state, city, county, and federal parks, centers, nature preserves and refuges in the region which hurried to announce one after the other that their doors and public access was closed while the flooded conditions persisted and they didn’t know how long this might last but guessed and correctly it turned out that this would likely be until late summer, like August or even early September. Then there were the assessments to be made as to what the damages were to these precious one-of-a-kind places. And indeed, there were trees that were felled, trails that were washed out, and other repairs that need or needed to be made since the work of doing so is ongoing across the region’s nature preserves and refuges. But for the most part these wild places, as wild gets in our own day, are again accessible and so here we were revisiting the CCNHC which we had first visited last fall 2014, on October 3, 2014, to be precise. It was a long hiatus.

And there was only one other person at the entire nature preserve on the late afternoon visit and hike that we made, which made the place an even more special one on this particular day for us personally at least. We had to climb over a few felled trees that were astride the trails still uncut but these were obstacles which we found entirely negotiable and surmountable. On entering the nature preserve we were greeted by one lonely but brilliantly colored and large Viceroy (Limenitis archippus) butterfly. It was looking to perch and eventually settled atop the highest point of a small tree next to the trail. And it was there in the shade of the tall stand of trees found at this site that it allowed us to take several digital images. We present a selection of three of these images in this observation. We thank the Viceroy butterfly for being there to greet us on our return to the CCNHC.

According to the range map for Viceroy provided at the Gardens with Wings Web site, the Viceroy flies across the broad expanses of North America from the central and eastern provinces of Canada south to most of the eastern half of the United States roughly from New Mexico in the Southwest to Montana on the north (though areas west of this region also occur but by then its distribution is scattered and found only in pockets). The same is true for Canada where there are a few pockets where Viceroy flies to the west of the central provinces. In Mexico, Viceroy enters through Texas and New Mexico and is found in these states (alphabetically) Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas and possibly areas adjoining Zacatecas in its southernmost range which occurs in this central Mexican region where the states of Aguascalientes, Guanajuato and Jalisco are to be found. Because Viceroy is a widespread North American butterfly it is without question an authentic resident of the Western Hemisphere.

Sources:

“Viceroy (butterfly),” Wikipedia, description (no range map), accessed 9.3.15, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceroy_%28butterfly%29

“Viceroy (Limenitis archippus),” Gardens with Wings, description and range map, accessed 9.3.15, http://www.gardenswithwings.com/butterfly/Viceroy/index.html

7 August 2015: Observed a large Sad Underwing Moth (Catocala maestosa) on the Bittern Marsh Trail at the Lake Lewisville Environmental Learning Area (LLELA) in Lewisville, Texas. In the shaded canopy where it was located it had the perfect camouflage for would-be predators as its dorsal patterns and colors blended like liquid into the background no matter the tree whose trunk it chose to perch upon. And yes, as others have noted already, there have been many of these moths at LLELA in July-August and certainly off of the Bittern Marsh Trail. The LLELA is administered jointly by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the City of Lewisville, Texas, and the University of North Texas.