Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The Emperor's New Wings

I was really surprised the other night when I happened upon a tree full of fairly fresh looking Hackberry Emperor (Asterocampa celtis) butterflies at Fenner.  Typically, their most prolific flight period occurs in early-to-mid-June; you rarely see them after July.  Nonetheless, these guys looked like they recently emerged - they had fresh, clear wing markings and none had tears in their wings or missing appendages.  The emergence of butterflies has been really weird this year and this just adds to the strange sightings.

No comments:

Post a Comment