wordless Wednesday

gray hairstreak ~ 07/17/14 ~ Podere di Farfalla

"Eh?  What's this?  You're going to take my picture?"

"No, please don't.  I'm not ready"

"Hold on a sec.  Let me spruce up a bit."

"OK, I'm ready.  Go ahead and take my picture."
male gray hairstreak perched on seacliff buckwheat
male Strymon melinus pudica perched on Eriogonum parvifolium 
Polygonaceae

What's not obvious in many of my pictures is how breezy it frequently is, which makes it very difficult to take clear shots of tiny butterflies even when they're perched on a plant.  I took the above set with the pocket camera held still while the buckwheat was waving about in the wind.  Seriously.  I've been loving the auto-macro feature on our 10-year-old Konica Minolta DiMAGE X50.  It's incredibly easy, although it's not as quick as I would like and only has 5 megapixels.  It's a shame it took us 9 years before we discovered this cool feature.  However, I'm worried that because of its age, it might crap out any day now.  I've been looking for a replacement and haven't found anything remotely equivalent.  I field tested other point-and-shoot cameras this summer and was less than pleased with the fuzzy not-really-macro results.  I'd welcome any suggestions for a replacement/addition to our Konica.

gray hairstreak ~ 06/01/14 ~ Pinnacles

 gray hairstreak

Strymon melinus
(Shapiro and Tenney)

I have another photo (a bit too fuzzy to post) where there's a hint of barely there orange on top of the abdomen.  And, given how pointy the butt is, I'm guessing it's a boy.  Female gray hairstreaks have gray colored abdomens.  I'm glad to have him for the count, even if he's a bit worn.  Fresh grays are quite stunning and reportedly very common.  I first caught him on woolly yerba santa, and then he hopped over to CA buckwheat for another pose.

I noticed I'm developing a fondness for butterflies that tend to perch at about my waist-height, and at Pinnacles that usually means CA buckwheat and woolly yerba santa.  They're the ones I'm most likely to capture a natural pose with my point-and-shoot.  I've really enjoyed looking at my own macro shots, because I'm seeing details that are impossible in-person.  It's kind of a funny thing, I have an excellent dissecting scope with snake lights and several pairs of binoculars, but I don't like using them as visual aids.  It's just one of those quirks.

variable checkerspot ~ 05/23/14 ~ Pinnacles

variable checkerspot / chalcedon checkerspot

Euphydryas chalcedona

(Shapiro and Tenney)

I love the face she's giving me, as if she's sticking out her tongue.  Technically, what I call "tongue" is her proboscis, a long, coiled and extendable mouthpart that functions like a drinking straw to suck up various liquids, such as nectar from flowers, water from mud, and moisture from poop (or so I've heard - I used to have a volunteer who would travel with domestic cat poo in a baggie for just this purpose...  I wonder how he explained at customs?).  With enough patience and a quick trick, I find butterflies are regularly agreeable to climbing on my finger so that I can take a closer look.  Paul took a picture of me with her on my finger.  I think he found my doing this rather peculiar. 

If it's not obvious from my photos, I prefer not to carry a net.  More traditional lepidopterists use a net to either collect and/or catch and release for a closer look.  This can be a legal issue in public parks or in areas where endangered butterfly species are found.  I'm still solely a collector of photographs (and trailside litter, especially glass bottles).  I'll admit that I've been dragging my feet writing up a request to obtain a collecting permit, which will also cover any primary catch and release activities for my project.  Eh, I'm in no hurry to start hauling around a bunch of collecting crap up and down hot hills.  Carrying enough water for myself is heavy enough, thank you (136 fl oz = 8.5 lbs ≈ 4 L ≈ >1 gallon ≈ 8 hours for me).  Photographs are working just fine for my needs right now.

Note her dark topside, which is very typical of the variable checkerspots found at Pinnacles.  This individual also shows solidly colored pumpkin-orange antennae, compared to the look-alike Edith's checkerspot, which has black-striped stems dipped in various curry colors at the tips. I find it impossible to distinguish the underside patterns between the two look-alikes in photos.  However, when both of these butterflies are on the wing together at Pinnacles and can be seen chasing each other, the variable flashes black and yellow, while the Edith's has a definite reddish background color.

Oh, I should mention that I'm not 100% positive she's a she.  I'm only guessing based on the hefty girth of the abdomen (fatty, fatty).  Honestly, I don't know how to sex most butterflies. Some can be obviously sexually dimorphic, but I have to be careful when there are look-alike spp. found in the same area and flying at the same time (there's a practical distinction between physical and temporal proximity), when one sex looks like the opposite sex of another sp.  It's a strange phenomena that I'm starting to notice.

As a last note, I generally don't use the name chalcedon to ID this butterfly.  It's the Bay Area folks from whom I first heard the name, probably to distinguish it from the federally threatened Bay checkerspot, which they do not call Edith's, btw, even though it is.  Plus, I mangle the pronunciation of chalcedon.

large marble ~ 05/16/14 ~ Mal Paso Canyon

large marble

Euchloe ausonides

(Shapiro and Tenney)

Did I choose the butterflies, or did they choose me?  I guess it helps when studying butterflies that given enough patience they'll cooperate for poses on my fingers.  Am I the butterfly whisperer?  Not really.  Macro, macro, macro!  Mwahahaha...  In the hand, this large marble is totally a piece of cake to ID.  However, I still can't distinguish this butterfly in flight compared to the more ubiquitous cabbage butterfly, which has been extremely frustrating for me.  Chris is quite impressive with his flight ID skills (probably all those years spent as a birder), but it's hard to explain to another person exactly what you look for to make that ID.  I think everyone has different cues that work for them.  I know a local botanist who is color blind, and I actually think that helps him distinguish the slight color variations in plants.  We all have our gifts.

ring-necked snake ~ 04/15/14 ~ Pinnacles

Monterey ring-necked snake

Diadophis punctatus vandenburghi

Paul is amazingly gentle when he catches herps.  I've never seen anything like it.  He'll just stop on the trail when he hears something rustling, look over, and then quietly pounce in one fell swoop with flat hands.  It looked like a Tai Chi movement.  He also got a rather large alligator lizard this way and showed us the stripes running down the middle of the belly scales and the light colored eyes.

The coolest thing about this snake is its odor.  No joke.  Right after Paul caught it, his fearless kids, who were downwind, made the funniest eww-gross faces.  As I moved in to take a closer look, I thought to myself, "Dang, someone has some really bad body odor."  Haha, it was the snake!  It smelled exactly like toe jam, or belly button jam.  Take your pick.  Paul said ring-necked and a couple other snakes release scent from their vents when stressed.  Wild.  I almost couldn't stop smelling my fingers after releasing this snake, as if it were my own version of the Flehmen response.  So weird.

I've commented on Nature of a Man and Dipper Ranch about how their area's ssp., the Pacific ring-necked snake (D. punctatus amabilis), looks tiny compared to what I remember of the dead one I found down at Rocky Creek.  I swear the dead one was as thick as my finger, not tiny enough to fit in 2 drinking straws, as Ken cleverly described.  But, lookie here, this is indeed very tiny and supposedly the same ssp. as Rocky Creek.  It could be a young one?  Or maybe I have a tendency to remember things as being larger than they actually were?  My recent discovery of the full-on macro, macro, mwahahaha mode may be messing with my sense of size, too, as is evidenced by this snake's pretty iridescence I uploaded to Flickr.  The ring-necked snake did not like my small point-and-shoot.  Every time I pressed the noiseless button, it would shirk its head away like it could see the blink of the camera eye.  Fascinating.  I really like holding snakes, but I also worry I could inadvertently harm the wild ones.

silvery blue ~ 04/08/14 ~ Pinnacles

 silvery blue nectaring upside down

Glaucopsyche lygdamus nectaring upside down
more information

He must have the hiccups he's trying cure?  Or the violet nectar is very potent, and this is a drunk butterfly?  Take your pick.  I was entertained watching this lone blue butterfly land horizontally across the topmost petal, extend his proboscis, turn down towards the center of the flower (either clockwise or counter-clockwise), and stick his head in as far as possible for a long draught (enough for me to get numerous pictures), and then wipe his proboscis off on a petal before moving on to another violet.  Wash and repeat.  So often, butterflies are quite dainty about their sipping, gently using their feet to taste.  Not this fellow, his proboscis led the way, and he was drinking with gusto.  I was a little surprised he didn't ever topple over. 

Johnny jump up / California golden violet
Viola pedunculata
Violaceae

So, naturally, I tried to stick the flash up in there, too, to see what the fuss was all about.  The violets are by no means tall, even though the flowers do, indeed, jump up away from the leaves.  Holding the camera down there facing a 45° angle up is tricky.  I'm starting to rue the day last fall when we discovered the macro feature on our 10-year-old point-and-shoot.  I want to do everything in macro now.  Macro, macro, macro!  Mwahahaha... but, it burns the battery quickly.  The dark nectar guides are stunning.  I bet they taste sweet to little feet (and probosces).

cute butterfly butt (view from above)

As a final note, the famously extinct Xerces blue butterfly is considered by some to have been a ssp. of Glaucopsyche lygdamus.  Then, there's also the federally endangered Palos Verdes blue butterfly (G. lygdamus palosverdesensis), which is being reintroduced, as Brent @ Breathing Treatment knows first-hand.

margined white ~ 02/16/14 ~ Los Padres Dam

female margined white / grey-veined white

female Pieris marginalis venosa (aka Pieris napi venosa)

 male margined white nectaring on California milkmaids

nectaring on Cardamine californica
Brassicaceae

Check out the cool yellow "shoulder" in the first pic above.  I'm so glad we finally found the macro setting on our ol' camera!  A small patch of milkmaids near the water was a very popular nectaring spot, being visited by butterflies, bee flies, and honey bees. There's not much in bloom, so it's worth noting that just down the way the patch of western coltsfoot had no visitors.

I also spotted margined whites at Stevens Creek last week, which at first sight I knew were related to cabbage whites (look at that dot on the male), but second guessed myself when I went to look for an ID.  I've totally missed the margined white ID before based on the fact I rely heavily on two quick references which omit entirely or misrepresent the early spring, first brood, bold version that I find in the area.  The summer brood is apparently almost all white.  It doesn't help that there doesn't seem to be much consensus on the Pieris "napi" complex.  I need to add notations to my field guides, so I can remember this for next time.

fence lizard ~ 09/22/13 ~ Garland Ranch

coast range fence lizard

Sceloporus occidentalis bocourtii

We've had the Konica Minolta DiMAGE X50 for 9 years now, and we just discovered a new automated macro feature.  Yep.  The more we look for a new camera, the more we like the one we already have.  

Once again, I was surprised to find juvenile fence lizards this time of year.  I don't know why it's still a surprise when I've seen them at Fort Ord in August a couple times before.  When do they hatch and how big are they?

And, yes, for some reason I cannot resist picking up little lizards.