Gulf Fritillary

As marauding otters (Lutra canadensis) destroyed my ponds and ran off all of my other wildlife I have a little extra time to post some photos. The ponds -- for now -- are dead zones. . . completely stripped of life, including all of my turtles. The only thing I can see in the ponds are a few crayfish that the otters missed.

I assume the otters are getting very hungry as the lakes dry to puddles. . . and that is why they paid us an unwelcome visit.

I am managing to keep some of the flowers alive despite the ongoing dry.

Pictured here are our normally most plentiful butterflies, the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae). They are starting to return but in much smaller numbers than a normal year.



The Gulf Fritillary is easily identified both by its color and the 3 white spots on both forewings.



The larvae (caterpillar) of the Gulf Fritillary feeds almost exclusively on species of passion flower such as the Maypop (Passiflora incarnata), Yellow Passionflower (P. Lutea) and Running Pop (P. foetida). We have some very healthy maypop vines growing on either side of the property which encourages this species.

Below: Other bugs are attracted to the maypops.



Below: A Gulf Fritillary in close-up. They are not skittish or shy so one can put the camera quite close to this species.



Below: The miserable hot and dry continues as we are sandwiched between two tropical systems and receiving the dry outflow from Tropical Storm Lee. In this image the east coast of Florida is cloud-free and painfully dry. Hurricane Katia is to the far right of the image some 1,000+ miles to our east.



Neither tropical system is currently forecast to bring us any rain, though that could always change. While it appears Katia is on a collision course for Florida one needs to remember the earth is round and the storm is moving NNW to NW. . .which would likely bring it to a higher latitutde than our 29.5° N. long before she arrives in this part of the world. The rest of the east coast might be in for an uncomfortably close brush with this storm, however.

WHERE WILL HURRICANE KATIA GO?

Meteorologist Grant Elliot of Australia's Bureau of Meteorology in Perth notes that the long-range forecast for Katia has more than the usual amount of uncertainty, due to the inability of the computer models to agree on what will happen to Tropical Storm Talas in the Western Pacific. Read more about Tropical Storm 15W (Talus) at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Talas is expected to hit Japan early on Saturday as a strong tropical storm, then race northwestwards into the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska. Talas is then expected to transition into a powerful extratropical storm in the waters south of Alaska. This storm will create a ripple effect downstream in the jet stream, all the way to North America, by early next week.

The timing and amplitude of the trough of low pressure off the U.S. East Coast expected to potentially recurve Katia out to sea next week is highly dependent upon the strength of Tropical Storm Talas during its transition to an extratropical storm. The computer forecast models are not very good at handling these sorts of transitions, leading to more than the usual amount of uncertainty in the long-range outlook for Hurricane Katia.

Below: Some sunspots are visible on a shot directly into the bright sun (with filter).



Back to Florida. Some of our other common butterflies are skippers. There are at least 3,500 species of skippers that occur worldwide. They are in the family Hesperildae. Identification is difficult, at best. Below: What I believe to be a Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus). This little guy is tiny. Maybe the size of one's fingernail. He's on our ubiquitous weed, Mexican Clover (Richardia brasiliensis). This stuff covers the ground and survives the droughts as its root system is something akin to a carrot.



Below: Another rather common butterfly that is largely overlooked because of its small size is the Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos).



The Pearl Crescent isn't specific about where it feeds nor where it lays its eggs. . . so they survive quite well in a difficult environment.



In Florida the species will have continuous broods -- weather permitting. Its wingspan is no more than 30 mm (a little over an inch).