hobiecat's Favorites

Photo 1- Note the Desert Black Swallowtail larvae dropped by the Scrub-Jay, which is about to be eaten.
Photos 2 & 3- Eating the larvae, including banging it against the boulder.
Photo 4- Back with another larvae, tucked under its left foot.
Photo 5- Back a third time to the Turpentine Broom, which is the host plant of the Desert Black Swallowtail.
Photo 6- Gotcha!

I've seen these exquisitely, tastefully beautiful brush-footed butterflies dining on road-kill before, but its always a little surreal. Apparently, the "four-footed" Satyrinae also dislike sunlight. They combine the very familiar with the very alien, and expand the mental image of Butterflies in a weird direction.

I believe this is a female, based on comparing pictures of the shapes of the wings - the forewing seems shorter and rounder than in the male. This lovely butterfly is not at all interested in flowers. It is indeed feeding on a dead Raccoon carcass, with its proboscis between the fangs like a dental instrument. The Raccoon was laying in the weeds just beyond a place where visitors to the public Game Lands can park a few cars, which is a little strange as well. Perhaps the male raccoon was tossed there after it was accidently killed on the road. This did not strike me as a perfectly natural scene in any case.

The setting was a small stream valley in the Allegheny Plateau, elevation around 328 meters (1076 feet), surrounded by approximately equal amounts of mixed deciduous second growth woodland and small farms.

Nectaring on Spreading Dogbane. Although available here on iNaturalist as a subspecies, I understand that "Kahli" Swallowtail is a Black X Old-World hybrid/intergrade. I do not know if iNat allows it to be identified as such.

Le pelage de l'Écureuil gris de l'Est (Sciurus carolinensis) peut être de deux couleurs, le gris et le noir, ce qui porte les gens à  croire (par erreur) qu'€™il s'€™agit de deux espèces distinctes. Le noir est souvent la couleur dominante dans le nord de l'aire de répartition de l'€™espèce, en Ontario et au Québec. Plus au sud, le noir est moins fréquent, et il ne se trouve aucun écureuil noir dans le Sud des ɉtats-Unis. Cela porte à  croire que le gène de la pigmentation noire traduit une adaptation aux basses températures. Il existe également des écureuils gris de l'€™Est albinos; aux ɉtats-Unis, on a observé de petites populations d’individus entièrement blancs. Il existe, quoique rarement, une variante de couleur rousse; certains individus ont un pelage bicolore, par exemple, un corps noir avec une queue rousse. / Eastern grey squirrels Sciurus carolinensis commonly occur in two colour phases, grey and black, which leads people to think—mistakenly—that there are two different species. Black is often the dominant colour in Ontario and Quebec, toward the northern limits of the species’ range. Farther south the black phase is less common and is not found at all in the southern United States. This may indicate that the gene responsible for black coloration has some cold-weather adaptation associated with it. Albino eastern grey squirrels also occur and in the United States a few small, completely white populations are found. There are rare instances of a reddish colour phase and some animals may also have a combination of colours, for example a black body with a red tail. https://www.hww.ca/en/wildlife/mammals/eastern-grey-squirrel.html#sid2

hunting from nearby tree, about 10:30am, looking intently down at snow, then landed and mantled for a couple of minutes, burying its head into the snow several times before flying off in the opposite direction

Kaibab Swallowtail Butterfly Roaring Springs,GRCA, AZ, May 15, 1987, R.J. Skalski

Grand Canyon Museum Collection
2 Albright Ave, Grand Canyon Village, AZ 86023
Phone: (928) 638-7769
https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/historyculture/muscol.htm