{"id":862,"date":"2007-07-11T17:40:08","date_gmt":"2007-07-11T22:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/?p=862"},"modified":"2020-01-03T16:05:50","modified_gmt":"2020-01-03T21:05:50","slug":"swallowtail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/swallowtail\/","title":{"rendered":"Swallowtail"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend was here for a visit (the reason I haven’t been blogging much!) and we spent a couple of hours last weekend at Mendon Ponds Park<\/a>, a 2500-acre county park south of Rochester.<\/p>\n

Here’s a pic.<\/p>\n

\"Tiger<\/p>\n

Isn’t he gorgeous?<\/p>\n

Probably a “he” since the females usually have more blue on their hindwings, according to my butterfly field guide, Butterflies of North America<\/a>\"\" by Jim Brock and Kenn Kaufman.<\/p>\n

What’s really interesting, though, is that if you went by the top of the wings (along with the range) you’d assume this is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus<\/em>). But if you look at the underside of his wings . . .<\/p>\n

\"Underside<\/p>\n

. . . it’s not so clear cut.<\/p>\n

You see, there’s a Canadian Tiger Swallowtail too (Papilio canadensis<\/em>), and it has a range that happens to overlap the northern part of New York State.<\/p>\n

\"Marginal
\nThe two species of butterflies are very similar, but on the Canadian, the yellow marginal band underneath the fore wing is continuous. Like this.<\/p>\n

On an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, that band would be broken — it would look like a series of dots.<\/p>\n

But even that’s not the answer. My butterfly was big. Canadian Swallowtails are usually quite a bit smaller than Easterns. And the black stripe on the underside of the butterfly’s hind wing, closest to his body, would be a lot thicker if he were a Canadian.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the guide says differentiating between the two species “can be difficult along the lengthy, narrow strip where their ranges meet . . .” and to make it even more interesting, “some individuals appear intermediate.”<\/p>\n

I’d say this is one of those individuals, wouldn’t you?<\/p>\n

We saw several other species of butterfly while we were there — it’s a fantastic spot for butterfly watching, since there’s a terrific mix of wetlands and woodlands — but I wasn’t able to get nice photographs of the others.<\/p>\n

\"Unidentified This was the best shot I got of this little guy, which is too bad, because the focus isn’t clear enough and I can’t ID him. I’m guessing it’s some kind of Skipper, but the closest in the guide is a Chisos Banded-Skipper, and they’re described as “rare, found in our area only in oak woodlands of Big Bend National Park, Texas.”<\/p>\n

Maybe I’ll try to go back and get another pic. There were two or three of them around. It’s a small butterfly but the banding on the wings was pretty striking.<\/p>\n

\"Yellow-collaredThis isn’t a butterfly, but a Yellow-collared Scape Moth, Cisseps fulvicollis<\/em>. He’s hit some hard times, judging by how raggedy the back edges of his wings are. These are really common moths around here — you see them all the time on flowers during the day. For some reason I find them just a touch creepy. They look like they’re up to something.<\/p>\n

\"ChipmunkThe park has other critters besides Lepidoptera. There are about a billion chipmunks.<\/p>\n

And of course, the requisite Canadian Geese. I liked this shot, only I wish the camera had captured a bit more detail on the head and neck of the goose in the foreground. The shots where I did get more detail, the goose wasn’t posing quite as nicely. Didn’t she know she was supposed to copy the arc of the log in the water? :-)<\/p>\n

\"Canadian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend was here for a visit (the reason I haven’t been blogging much!) and we spent a couple of hours last weekend at Mendon Ponds Park, a 2500-acre county park south of Rochester. Here’s a pic. Isn’t he gorgeous? … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[1628,1627,1625,1624,1629,92,1626],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-rochester-new-york","tag-butterflies-of-north-america","tag-canadian-geese","tag-canadian-tiger-swallowtail","tag-eastern-tiger-swallowtail","tag-jim-brock-and-kenn-kaufman","tag-mendon-ponds-park","tag-yellow-collared-scape-moth"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6284,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/6284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}