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Thursday, October 10, 2013

A well-named butterfly

(Re-posted from The Nature of Things.)

Sometimes you get lucky.

I was sitting on my backyard bench by the pond over the weekend with my camera in my hands because I was trying - unsuccessfully as it turned out - to get some pictures of a red dragonfly. Then, Fate brought me another subject for my photography efforts. A tiny butterfly landed in the grass near my feet and I aimed the camera at it and snapped.

When I looked at the picture later, I realized that it was a butterfly I had never seen before. Actually, it was so small, with a wingspread of perhaps an inch, that it is possible I had seen it before and had simply not noticed it.

That's often the case of some of the tiny butterflies. We are distracted by the Monarchs and the various swallowtails, all large and showy butterflies that grab our attention, and we forget to notice some of the smaller treasures that are right there under our noses.

The well-named Dainty Sulphur certainly qualifies as one of those treasures. It is a pretty little butterfly and the smallest of the family of butterflies known as whites and sulphurs, In fact, it is so distinctive and different from other sulphurs that some taxonomists believe it should be accorded a separate subfamily of its own.

This butterfly is a year-round resident from Guatemala and the West Indies northward to Florida and the southwestern states, including Texas. Its preferred habitat is dry, open areas such as weedy fields and sandy coastal flats. It flies just a few inches above the ground and nectars from a number of different flowers, especially those in the aster family. Congregations of the little butterflies can sometimes be found at mud puddles or on patches of damp sand.

Surprisingly perhaps, this tiny critter is migratory, except for the population in Florida which appears, for unknown reasons, not to migrate. The butterflies expand their range northward during the summer months, pressing on all the way to the northern tier of states where they perish in the winter cold. The next year the northward journey begins all over again.

The caterpillars of the butterfly feed on a variety plants, mainly members of the aster family.

The Dainty Sulphur is present in my area throughout much of the year. Now that I've made its acquaintance, I will be on the lookout for it in the future.  

8 comments:

  1. How cool! I'll start looking for them here.

    Surprised that they migrate. Probably don't need to migrate in Florida, at least in the south where it seldom freezes. We had a year-round Monarch culture in our Florida yard for the same reason.

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    1. The odd thing about their migration is that they migrate as far north as they can go before the cold catches and kills them. Apparently, they don't migrate south at all. The next year a new generation of them starts heading north again. Very strange.

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  2. I have not heard of these before, though there are probably some here in Mississippi. Thanks for the info.
    Lea
    Lea's Menagerie

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    1. I was not familiar with them before I snapped that picture. According to my guide book, they are supposedly fairly common, but they are so tiny that I suspect they mostly go under our radar.

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  3. You are right, Dorothy! The name suits very well! What a beautiful photo!

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    1. It's a beautiful little - and fairly anonymous - butterfly.

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  4. Cute little butterfly. I see Sulfurs a lot, but probably the larger ones. I don't think they come to my area. Someone posted a photo of an Orange Sulfur that I found very entrancing and unfamiliar as well.

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    1. I get several kinds of Sulphurs in my yard, especially during autumn. In my memory, autumn and yellow butterflies always go together.

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