November, 2016

Tailed Orange

Living so close to our southern neighbor, Mexico, there is always the possibility of seeing tropical butterflies here in central Texas, and that is exactly what happened recently. Although I've been photographing insects since 2003, I had never seen a tailed orange (Eurema proterpia) until this year. The species is one of those specialties that people travel to the Lower Rio Grande Valley in order to observe. An individual might stray farther north, but it is a rare and unusual event. For some reason, this past summer we had an explosion of these butterflies here in Austin. Lots of people were seeing them in their gardens, and not just one or two - there were scores. The first few that I saw were elusive, but, with so many opportunities, I eventually obtained images. Our backyard has a large patch of dicliptera whose blossoms seemed especially attractive, and I frequently saw the eye-catching bright orange on the top of the wings and the tails at the rear as these distinctive butterflies flew about.