Dear Wood Folk, Around Haliburton, Ontario we have 4 comma butterflies: the green comma (polygonia faunus), eastern comma (polygonia comma), gray comma (polygonia progne), and the question mark (polygonia interrogationis). They are all sorted into the genus polygonia. They stand out with their angular wing edges from lookalike crescents and fritillaries. But they are very …
Dear Wood Folk, A while back we covered the red admiral, who despite the shared moniker admiral, is quite different from the white AKA red-spotted purple admiral (limenitis arthemis) we’re featuring today. They aren’t even in the same family! Surprisingly, today’s featured “admiral” is more closely related to monarchs. The appearance of limenitis arthemis is …
Dear Wood Folk, The silvery checkerspot (chlosyne nycteis) looks a lot like a northern or pearl crescent, and sometimes it’s called a silvery crescent. These crescents are hard to tell apart, especially the females. You can see pictures of the silvery on iNat. It appears to be dotted with white spots, unlike the northern and pearl. …
Dear Wood Folk, The dreamy duskywing (erynnis icelus) is another skipper butterfly. We’ve covered the more orangey skippers in a previous diary, and the endangered mottled duskywing in another. Dreamy has a close lookalike in the more commonly seen Juvenal’s duskywing (erynnis juvenalis) and the rarer columbine duskywing (erynnis lucilius). All three of which are found …
Dear Wood Folk, In Ontario, we have three crescent butterflies. The two main crescents are the northern crescent (phyciodes cocyta) and pearl crescent (phyciodes tharos), who may or may not be the same species, although the current line of thought is that they are separate species. That might flip flop. And third is the tawny …
Dear Wood Folk, Silvery blue (glaucopsyche lygdamus) butterflies are easily mistaken for similarly blue azures, who were featured in our diaries earlier this year. I almost included the silvery blue caterpillar (below in this feature) in the azure diary by mistake! The slivery blue are easier to find with their wings spread open than azures. …