The Purple Pathway: Additions and Corrections

Why does it not surprise me that, after a trip to the library, looking through three butterfly books, going online searching, rather ineffectually for Eastern TN butterflies, and still not being positive about the ID of the ones we saw, my daughter goes online and zap, within 5 minutes, has the answer! Color me humbled!

And the answer, for you, the wondering reader, if you even remember the question, is that these clusters of brown butterflies we encountered throughout our walk were, and I love this name, Dreamy Duskywings (Erynnis icelus).



All the facts fit, they fly from April to August, they love trails and clearings in the woods, their host plants are poplars, which we were surrounded by, and their picture, when held side by side to ours, seemed identical. There’s the part I didn’t know how to do, hold our picture on the screen, blow it up and slide it next to the one online. Child’s play for her, for most of you I imagine, but out of my skill set.



And shazam, the black swallowtail I mentioned, my son-in-law pointed out, may very well have been a female tiger swallowtail for here in the south they often have a black form that mimics a noxious one called the Pipevine Swallowtail. And he has a Ph.D. not in natural history, but in computers. Humbling again. There is a black swallowtail, but he probably is right. So, that’s pretty cool. And while we are on the topic of Tiger Swallowtails, let’s throw in a picture of their larval form.



You may have run across them in books that talk about unusual mimicry as a way of protection. Tiger Swallowtail larvae try to avoid becoming a meal by looking like bird scat. And if any animal is odd enough to fancy bird scat, they will go a step further and rear up trying to look like a scary, albeit small, snake. And if the attacker still isn’t convinced, they slip out something that is an approximation of a forked tongue. If that doesn’t work, well, there will be one less swallowtail flitting by, but you can’t say it didn’t try.

Now, God willing, my daughter and her husband will be off to Germany tomorrow, and I will have to rely on my own stinted computer skills to continue the blog from here. But we do have other things to talk about. We have several male cardinals fighting over the love of the one female I see out front and this will be interesting to see how it plays out. Especially since one of the males is unfortunate enough to have that “vulture cardinal” look going on, where they loose all their head feathers and look more like a throw back to the Cretaceous than our lovely VA state bird. Does he stand a chance with the maiden looking so prehistoric, or can she look pass that to the bird he is inside? Guess you will have to stay tuned, and Elena and I will have to stay at the window, to find out.