The butterflies are becoming more abundant lately. There are lots of nectar-producing flowers blooming now, so tons of food. Over the weekend I managed to get photos of two more butterfly species:
Epargyreus clarus (silver-spotted skipper), and
Phyciodes cocyta (? sometimes it is difficult to tell apart species in this genus but I think it's
Phyciodes cocyta based on what appears to be an orange tip on the antennal club, which is apparently a distinguishing feature of this species [
1]), the northern crescent.
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| Phyciodes cocyta (?) |
Both of these species are native to North America.
Phyciodes cocyta is one of Canada's most abundant butterflies in its range [
1].
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| Phyciodes cocyta (?) |
Epargyreus clarus is Canada's largest skipper [
2], being about as big as a monarch or tiger swallowtail. It is not particularly abundant [
2], so I was lucky to have run into a group of them (there were four that I saw in a few minutes). This species can be somewhat colonial [
2], so it's unsurprising that there were a reasonable number of them in the same area.
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| Epargyreus clarus - collecting nectar from Vicia cracca |
I also managed to get a very nice shot of a ladybug, which I believe is
Coccinella septempunctata (seven-spotted ladybug), a species native to Europe but which has been repeatedly and extensively introduced in North America as pest control against aphids [
3].
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| Coccinella septempunctata |
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