South Texas | Winged Beauty Butterflies

Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at the National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX

Come and enjoy with me. I gaze at this Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak Butterfly, it nectaring on a wildflower in the National Butterfly Center’s Perennial Garden(s). Glassberg’s A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of North America notes that in South Texas this is a “C” for commonly found butterfly. True that for south Texas, but from where I’m sitting, now, south Texas is some what, 1,300 miles away?

What a sweet treat to stop and take in the mellow beauty of this tiny hairstreak butterfly. I see what I adore? Do you like the same as I love? I cannot know.

The last year has unsettled me some, and the beauty of this little gem becalms me, settles me. I know that I need more, much more of this, and I so look forward to this 2021, to deliver on that need. You too?

Mission, Texas, just a handful of miles from the Mexican-Texas border.

Jeff

Malachite butterfly (4) photographed by Jeff Zablow at the National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX

So I’m in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and it’s Christmas week in Texas. We’re at the National Butterfly Center near the border wall in Mission Texas. Me? It’s my first time there, and I am as Happy! as a duck.

We’re seeing lots and lots of butterflies. The morning temperatures range from the mid-70’s up to the high-80’s. The last week in December and we’re enjoying temps in the low to high -80’s. Wow!

This Malachite Butterfly (that’s it’s recognized name, ‘Malachite’) was spotted, and the handful of us nearby moved briskly to have a look. It was resting on this leaf on a trail that wound its way across a depression in the land, a kind of heavily vegetative crevice.

I shot some photographs, and returned minutes later to score looks at its ventral wing surface.

Jeffrey Glassberg’s A Swift Guide to Butterflies (Princeton University Press, 2nd Edition, 2017) has the Malachite as “U” for Uncommon in south Texas. Big smile here. I visited the Lower rio Grande Valley for the first time in my rich life, and meet a fine, fresh “U” Malachite. Thank Y-u.

Jeff