May 25, 2022

Butterfly ID tips from Parragon's Ultimate Guide

Giant Swallowtail -- distinguished by diagonal band of yellow spots on each forewing, large yellow spots on margins of each wing and yellow eyespots on the tails.

Tiger Swallowtail -- background color is yellow with black stripes on the forewing and black wing margins with yellow spots, tail streamers are black and hindwing edges are gently scalloped.

Black Swallowtail -- two rows of yellow dots along wing margins, iridescent blue patch on hindwings between the bands, a small red eyespot on the inner edge of each hindwing.

Orange Sulphur -- small dark spot in the center of the forewing.

Cloudless Sulphur _- brown-edged pale spot in center of forewing as seen from below.

Gray Hairstreak -- Orange and black eyespot above the tail on the hindwing, visible from below as well; delicate orange, black, and white band crossing the wings.

Pearl Crescent -- from above the wings are orange with black borders and markings; the underwings are creamy yellow with brown veins, with two distinct brown patches on the forewing and a pale crescent on the hindwing.

Little Wood Satyr -- rich brown wings with a pair of dark lines at the edges, a pair of eyespots on each wing, black with orange rings and silver-blue highlights. On the underside the eyespots are connected by small metallic spots.

These notes are from a very nice book, but most of the species it shows are from other continents, so I had to give its shelf space to another book.

Posted on May 25, 2022 03:08 AM by textileranger textileranger | 0 comments | Leave a comment

May 9, 2022

Obsolete Bird Names

Have you ever heard of a greenlet, a sooty buzzard, or a scolopaceous courlan? These are all names that were once in use. In 1988, the US Fish and Wildlife Service published a booklet with many obsolete or regional common names, to aid bird researchers who might come across these names in old museum specimens or historic accounts.

It is available at the USDA Wildlife Services Digital Collections page
https://nwrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16473coll29/id/2336
and also here on Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Obsolete_english_names_of_North_American_birds_and_their_modern_equivalents.-_DPLA-_e23dfedc5b83787bb7a42b9ba80f492c.pdf.

I made up a little quiz matching the old names to our current names here
https://littlewildstreak.com/2016/11/13/quiz-obsolete-bird-names/
and the answers are here
https://littlewildstreak.com/2016/11/14/bird-quiz-answers/

And the answers above -- a greenlet is what we call a vireo, a sooty buzzard is now called a Short-tailed Hawk, and a scolpaceous courlan is a Limpkin.

Posted on May 9, 2022 02:56 PM by textileranger textileranger | 0 comments | Leave a comment

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