| Butterflies
of Northern Illinois |
| If
you want to see butterflies in northern Illinois then you could do much
worse than take a drive out to Volo
Bog, in Lake county. When you get there you hardly even
need to get out of your car, because there are butterfly gardens adjacent
to the parking lot planted with flowers like this cone flower, which are
native to the prairie lands which used to dominate this part of the mid-west.
This cone flower has attracted an American lady butterfly, which is sipping
the nectar it needs to power itself through another day. Of
all the "lady" butterflies, this one is the most tolerant of cold, which
is a useful ability in this part of the country. |
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| Another
lady in the butterfly garden, but this time a painted lady.
Although it's very closely related, it can be distinguished from the American
lady by the four small eyespots on the underside of its hind wings, rather
than two large eyespots. Naturalists like to use the expression
"American ladies have big eyes" to remember the difference.
Painted ladies migrate south when the weather gets cold and north when
it gets warm. |
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| This
is what the tops of the painted lady's wings look like; the patterns on
the American lady are subtly but recognizably different.
The painted lady is also called the Cosmopolite, because they have the
widest range of any butterfly, living in the Americas from the Arctic down
to Panama, as well as throughout Africa, Europe and Asia. |
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| I
was one of several creatures who thought it was their lucky day when I
came across a tree with a broken branch next to the path. This
red admiral is closely related to the American lady and the painted lady
and, as you can see, the colors and patterns on the underside of its wings
are vaguely similar. Once it found the sap oozing from the
branch it started sucking it up with its proboscis. |
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| When
the red admiral flew away from the broken branch it was kind enough to
let me take a photograph of the topside of its wings as it rested on a
nearby bush. Like the other two lady butterflies, the red admiral
is very hairy, which allows it to tolerate quite cold weather.
Red Admirals do migrate south in winter, but they spread very rapidly northward
during spring. The Red
Admiral caterpillar mostly eats nettles, but it will also eat hops
and a few other plants. Like most caterpillars, they're quite
specialized in what they will and won't eat. |
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| This
red admiral was sitting in the middle of the path and I didn't notice it
until I was almost on top of it. It flew away, but since I
knew how territorial this species is I waited and in a minute or two it
came around again, flying back and forth and checking me out to see if
I was a threat. After deciding I wasn't it landed back in the
path and I started very slowly maneuvering towards it on my stomach to
get some closeup photos. It flew away several times, but each
time came back and I finally managed to get to within a few inches to get
this photo. On one of its forays it even started chasing a
hapless bumble bee which stumbled into its airspace, and I was surprised
by how quickly the red admiral flew, and how it was able to twist and turn
to follow the intruder through the bushes. Quite what it would
have done if it had caught the bee I don't know!
If you look closely you'll see that it's only standing on two pairs of
legs, but if you look even closer you'll see that the third pair is hooked
up behind its eyes. This is a fairly common feature of several
butterfly species, but one which most people don't know about.
There's that proboscis again, but this time coiled up underneath the head. |
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| But
back to that broken tree, which attracted more than just that red admiral.
Here a paper wasp throws a right hook to chase away a comma butterfly and
the ladybird beetles have had to run to cover to avoid getting involved
in the fight! The comma is every bit as feisty as the red admiral,
in fact the only time I've ever been struck by a butterfly was when a comma
made several close passes at me on the path around Volo bog, and then actually
hit me before flying away. |
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The comma, whose scientific name is Polygonia comma, gets
its name from the curved white mark on the underside of its hind wings.
There is also a related species which I've never photographed called the
question mark (Polygonia interrogationis), though I have seen the
question mark caterpillar. The
caterpillar of the comma prefers to eat elm leaves, nettles and hops,
which is why the adult butterfly is sometimes called the "hop merchant".
The comma prefers to live on the edges of wooded areas, and when it feels
threatened it retreats to a tree trunk or underside of a branch, where
it perches upside down. Like the American lady and the painted
lady, the mottled gray and brown surfaces of the comma's underwings greatly
resemble tree bark, and it is very well camouflaged when its wings are
closed. |
| After
drinking that sap the comma must have been very relaxed, because it allowed
me to take this photo. It's not easy to get a photo of the
top of a comma's wings, they usually prefer to sit with them closed, or
if they're sunning themselves they'll fly off before you can get near them,
either to move somewhere else or to get closer and attack you.
This is the "orange" form of the comma which is seen later in the year;
the summer or "black" form has a much darker hind wing. |
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| Until
I was preparing this page I thought that this was also a comma, however
it's actually a different species, the satyr anglewing. As
its name suggests, it's a member of the anglewing family of butterflies,
just like the comma and the question mark, but its hind wings don't have
the dark trailing edges of the comma. The satyr anglewing does
have a white mark on the underside of its wings just like the comma, so
some people call it the satyr comma, however it's completely unrelated
to the large family of butterflies called satyrs, although like them it
does like living in woods. |
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| Here's
another highly territorial butterfly, the mourning cloak, which in Britain
is called the Camberwell beauty, though it's very uncommon there.
Mourning cloak butterflies are very hairy, they're one of the very few
butterflies which actually live right through the incredibly cold and snowy
Illinois winters, which means that they're often the first butterflies
that people see in spring. Since there are no flowers for them
to gather nectar at in early springtime, they depend on sap flowing from
branches and twigs broken by the wind. Like the lady and anglewing
butterflies, the undersides of its wings are very well camouflaged, but
if disturbed the mourning cloak will take off with an audible "click". |
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| Volo
Bog offers quite a few different types of habitat, including (obviously)
bog, forest and prairie, and it's fairly common to see swallowtails like
this male Eastern tiger swallowtail in these open grassy prairie areas
- however photographing them is something else! The only photos
of tiger swallowtails I got were either at a great distance as they were
resting high up in a tree, or at a funny angle, like this one which allowed
me to get close because it was temporarily engrossed in drinking from the
flowers of a milkweed. |
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| The
only other type of swallowtail that I saw at Volo Bog was this male eastern
black swallowtail. Although it landed in a fairly good spot
for a photo, it's in very poor condition, having lost the right "tail"
at the back of its hindwing which gives swallowtails their name, and it
has also lost various other bits and pieces along the trailing edges of
all four of its wings. This damage might have happened partly
as a result of attacks by birds and partly from old age and normal wear
and tear, but this individual clearly didn't begin its life as a butterfly
recently. Fortunately, you can see a
photo of this same species which I took a few years later in Mexico. |
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| Sulphur
butterflies liked this pink-edge sulphur are another common inhabitant
of these grassy areas. There are blueberries growing wild within
Volo Bog, which is just what pink-edged sulphurs enjoy. |
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| The
painted lady might be the most widespread butterfly in the world, but the
monarch is probably the most well-known because, although a native of the
Americas, it's been introduced into many other parts of the world.
Monarchs living in the United States migrate south in September and October,
those from the mid-west and east spending winter in the pine forests of
the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico, and those from the western United
States staying in Pacific Grove in southern California. Unlike
the painted lady, where one generation migrates south and the next generation
migrates north, individual monarch butterflies will first head south, mate
in early spring and then head north again, though it's usually left to
their offspring to repopulate the far northern and eastern extremities
of their natural range. |
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When I'm walking around I look for anything which is interesting, including
birds, beetles, dragonflies, caterpillars and lots of other critters.
It happened that one day the thought came into my head that I very rarely
saw any butterfly chrysalises, and the distinctive image of a monarch butterfly
chrysalis popped into my head, probably because I don't know what the chrysalises
of any other butterfly species look like. Sure enough, less
than five minutes after I'd had this thought, here was this monarch butterfly
chrysalis staring me in the face.
The monarch butterfly chrysalis is very well known, and so is the monarch
butterfly caterpillar. Like the chrysalis and the butterfly
itself, the caterpillar stores up poisons from the milkweed that it eats,
making all these stages of the life cycle very unpalatable to potential
predators like birds. |
The monarch's bold and colorful wings, both top and bottom surfaces, are
an advertisement to enemies that it's not a smart idea to eat the butterfly.
This is a male monarch, identifiable by the two dark spots on one of the
black lines on the hind wings. These dark spots are scent patches
which release pheremones used to attract the females. |
| Ah,
another monarch butterfly, one which has died and gone to daisy heaven!
But wait - this isn't a monarch butterfly at all, but an entirely different
species in a different family! This viceroy butterfly mimics
the monarch in order to gain protection from its own enemies.
The easiest way to distinguish the viceroy from the monarch is by the black
line across the middle of the viceroy's hind wings. |
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| The
lines might be different, but the viceroy even has the same white spots
on its black body that the monarch has. This particular viceroy
is eating a frog, which probably means that it's a male in search of salts
to pass on to its partner so she can grow her eggs. This behavior
is very common amongst male butterflies of many species, it often takes
the form of "puddling" on the ground, sometimes on a riverbank, where the
butterfly sucks up the moisture, retaining the salts but expelling the
water. |
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Sucking a frog might be gross, but many otherwise cute butterflies like
this great spangled fritillary go to even greater lengths to get salt,
which is a surprisingly rare commodity in the natural world. |
| For
instance, I found this great spangled fritillary at the Dead River nature
reserve next to Lake Michigan, merrily sucking all the goodness out of
some nice fresh dog droppings! It's a fact of life for butterfly
photographers that some of the best photographic opportunities come about
in this way - it's usually best just to keep quiet about exactly what the
butterfly is standing on! |
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| The
common buckeye is one of my favorite American butterflies, because of its
bold colors and patterns, particularly the "eyespots" on its front and
hind wings. These eyespots are thought to be used as a warning
to birds, which don't like to be looked at by something which might be
a predator. Even if it only startles the bird for a few seconds,
that can be enough time for the butterfly to make its escape.
This individual might be newly emerged from its chrysalis, because it's
in excellent condition with no holes in its wings or any other signs of
wear and tear. As well as adult butterflies, Dead River is
one of the few places where I've seen a buckeye
caterpillar. |
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| This
female pearly crescentspot is another inhabitant of Dead River, but it's
much smaller than the buckeye. In spite of their size, males
of this species are territorial and combative, they'll leave their perch
to investigate birds or even larger animals like ourselves. |
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| This
banded hairstreak was resting in the shade of a wood at Moraine Hills state
park. Hairstreaks are a family of butterflies scattered around
the world which have false antennas on their back wings. When
they're perched on a leaf they slowly rub their hind wings up and down
to make it appear as if the antenna are moving - the intention is to fool
any bird which might be watching, and make it peck at the wing instead
of the all-important head. Some species even go through a ritual
straight after landing of turning around 180 degrees, again to trick the
birds. |
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