Buckeye Butterflies

 

A buckeye butterfly sitting on a puff of white asters. Click to enlarge.

The buckeye gets its common name from big spots on its upper wing surfaces. They are called eyespots, and are thought to scare away predators. The butterfly performs a famous "startle display" -- rapidly opening its wings to flash those big false eyes. Boo!

Also check out its pretty orange bars and bands. Buckeyes have a wingspan of about 2.5 inches and are found throughout North America.

They move south this time of year to avoid the cold weather.

I have seen a lot of buckeyes this week. Even this pair, mating in the middle on the path in the warm autumn sunshine. I wish them all a safe journey to warm places.

Blueberry Season

The heat and sunshine have been intense these past few weeks but that's not all bad. Some of it went into ripening New Jersey's blueberry crop. They are ready!

I went blueberry picking this week on a farm in Hammonton, New Jersey; that's the blueberry capital of the world. Click the photos to enlarge.

I came back with 12 pints of blueberries for which I paid $1.66 each.

I got a fine day out, a good deal, exercise, and...

a picnic beside Hammonton Creek, pictured here. It was lovely.

When I got home, I made blueberry jam. I'm going to try to save some until January. It is summer in a jar. 

Delicious.

The hot sunny days are also good for butterfly spotting. Here are some that I saw on berry picking day. A cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae.

A spicebush swallowtail, Papilio troilus.

A tiger swallowtail, Papilio glaucus.

And a buckeye, Junonia coenia.

Another Walk in New Jersey

I wrote a blog in August about a walk I took in northern New Jersey. Here's another blog about a walk in New Jersey, but this time around Cape May at the end of October. The trees were turning colors around one of the ponds at Higbee Beach Wildlife Management area.  Click on the photos to enlarge. 

There were a lot of buckeye butterflies around. They are migrating now. Click here to see a previous blog about buckeye butterflies. 

Buckeyes are seasonally dimorphic; the undersides of their rear wings are tan or brown in spring but pink like this one in autumn. 

Through the woods and onto the dune path. 

To the windy beach. 

All the while migrating hawks were zipping overhead -- too fast for me to photograph, alas. 

Then a little more woods walking. 

Past a few of these south Jersey style swamps. 

In the sheltered spots there were green darner dragonflies, Anax junius.  They are migrating now, too. We can tell that this one is a male from the blue on its abdomen. 

Then there was this little metallic bee shining like gold in the sunlight. It's scientific name Augochlora pura means "pure golden green." These bees are usually green but can be coppery or gold like this one. It is one of the prettiest bees ever. 

And here is a spiffy hover fly from the genus Sphaerophoria. You would think it was still summer in some of the sunny protected corners of Cape May's fields. 

Then back to the leafy country road and home. 

There are some really pretty places in New Jersey. 

Autumnal Equinox Today

The autumn equinox occurred at 4:44 this afternoon, EDT, giving us 12 hours of daylight and 12 of dark as the sun crossed the celestial equator. Summer ended. Autumn began. Here are pictures of some of the last of summer's butterflies (and one lovely moth) taken in my Brooklyn neighborhood during the last few weeks.

Cabbage White, Pieris rapae. Click to enlarge. 

Buckeye, Junonia coenia. 

Sachem, a skipper butterfly, Atalopedes campestris. 

Ailanthus webworm moth, Atteva aurea. 

American Lady, Vanessa virginiensis. 

A haiku written by the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa in 1814:

are you aware 

that autumn has dawned?

meadow butterfly

Common Buckeye Butterfly

Junonia coenia, the common buckeye butterfly, is chestnut brown. The forewing has two orange bars and two bull's-eye spots; a white band surrounds the larger spot. The hindwing also has two spots; the upper one contains a purple crescent. Click to enlarge. 

Buckeye caterpillars come in various forms but usually have an orange head, a black body with white and orange side stripes, and spiky blue spines along the top. More spines grow from orange bumps along the sides. Click to enlarge. 

The buckeye is common throughout most of the United States, living year-round in the southern states. Every year when weather warms in late spring and early summer some buckeyes go north to colonize areas as far as southern Canada.  Northern populations move southward in autumn, sometimes migrating in large numbers. Adults and caterpillars overwinter in the southern parts of the range.

Buckeyes are found in fields of flowers, open ares, roadsides, gardens, and parks. I saw dozens of adults and caterpillars this weekend while walking in the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge on the New Jersey coast near Atlantic City.

The Buckeyes are Leaving

The buckeye butterfly, Junonia coenia. 

Buckeye butterflies are passing through New York, heading south. I keep seeing them in the open sunny places that they like -- lawns and parks, roadsides, empty lots, and fields of weeds.

They are heading to the warmer places where they live year round like the southern United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Every spring some of them return to repopulate the northern United States and parts of Canada. Their southbound autumn flight is particularly noticeable along the coasts where at times they seem to be everywhere.

Adult buckeyes are about two and a half inches across. They are brown and tan, with a pair of orange bars on each forewing, and a series of large “eyespots” that may scare off predators when the wings open suddenly to reveal them.  (Oh no! Says the attacking bird -- some giant thing is looking right at me!) The caterpillars vary from dark greenish to gray or black with orange and yellow lines and rows of fancy spikes.

The buckeye caterpillar -- slim and stylish. 

 The butterflies sip nectar from asters, chicory and peppermint flowers, and some others. The caterpillars are especially fond of the foliage of plantains, snapdragons and toadflax.

Most of us are familiar with sexually dimorphic species, like lions or cardinals, where males and females look different. But buckeye butterflies appear in different forms in different seasons. The buckeye’s wings are tan underneath in spring, but red underneath in autumn; the change is probably linked to lower temperatures and shorter days. The difference is so pronounced that scientists call the forms by different names -- linea for the tan one and rosa for the other.