Making it Up As I Go

We’ve been a little obsessed with butterflies around here recently, and today we decided to go find some in the wild. So we headed out to Ulistac Natural Area and got our looking eyes out.  Tiny also got her whistling mouth out, which translates to short high pitched screaming, but we convinced her after some tears that if she wanted a “butterfly land on my tummy” (her goal for the day) that she was going to need to be quiet.

Our first find was this fine fellow. Not a butterfly, but pretty awesome nonetheless.

We walked around in a fruitless search for a while (in retrospect, I think we were there too early) but before long we stumbled upon:

Do you see his tongue? Z was very excited about that part. This little guy hung out near us for quite some time, so we were able to get a bunch of pictures. I think we’ve correctly identified him as a Fiery Skipper.

Isn’t he pretty?

We caught a couple of glimpses of this next one, but he was a speedy little guy, and far more skiddish than the Skipper above. I think he’s a Buckeye. This was the best picture I could get of him. But he and his friend did perform a lovely game of chase around and above our heads that had the girls staring open mouthed and squealing in delight.

Lastly was this little one. Also pretty friendly, but he refused to open his wings, so I could only attempt an identification from the back of his wings. (But all of the pictures of the kind of butterfly I think he is had the wings closed as well, so maybe it’s a species thing.)

I think he’s a Grey Hairstreak.  The orange going up the wing differentiates him from the California Hairstreak, so I think I’m right. But who knows, I’ve only just started with this whole identification thing. But I can see how it could get addicting!

Z also found what she called a “spiderweb house”, which is a pretty apt description. She was a bit concerned about the bugs that would get caught in it, because “the bugs are my friends!”.  Yes, they are.

And that was our butterfly adventure. The girls want to go out again soon, so I’ll post  pictures if we get some more.