Mylitta crescent ~ 07/25/14 ~ Sierra Valley

female Mylitta crescent nectaring on Canada thistle

female Phyciodes mylitta mylitta nectaring on Cirsium arvense

Asteraceae

Note the stronger contrast of the female underside (ventral) markings compared to the male Mylitta crescent.  The same can be said above (dorsal), too - see below.

female (brighter, ~middle of pic), male (more solid in color and at the bottom of the pic)
Mylitta crescent

Phyciodes mylitta mylitta

Mylitta crescent ~ 07/10/14 ~ Podere di Farfalla

male Mylitta crescent nectaring on tocalote

male Phyciodes mylitta mylitta nectaring on Centaurea melitensis

for more information, click here and here

Asteraceae

The first crescent butterfly I became familiar with was in Ohio, the pearl crescent (Phyciodes tharos).  It became my mental model of what a crescent should look like on the top, something I liken to a grandmother's lace doily (don't ask me why, it just worked for me).  It was such an immediate ID clue for me that I don't think I ever really bothered to look at the underside (ventral) of the wings.  It wasn't until I recently picked up Art Shapiro's Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions that it finally dawned on me why crescents are named such.  Just look at that white crescent shape, along the margin in the middle of the ventral hindwing!  Cool.  Note: not all crescents have such strongly marked crescents.  Also to note:  female Mylitta often have more strongly marked topside (dorsal) patterns.  Ah, I'm slowly getting the hang of local IDs...

crab spider ~ 07/02/14 ~ Donner Pass

crab spider captured Montana crescent on common yarrow

Thomisidae captured Phyciodes pulchella montana on Achillea millefolium

posted 09/28/14 - If I were to hazard a guess as to the type of crab spider, I'd say it's a flower crab spider (Misumena), more specifically the goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia).  Another possibility could be the whitebanded crab spider (Misumenoides formosipes).  However, I'm guessing it's near impossible to tell from my photo, even if I knew what diagnostics to look for.  Eh, I'm not too fussed about the spider ID.  I'm guessing there are more spiders on flowers than I ever notice, because good nectar sources are essentially ready-made butterfly buffets, bee buffets, you name it, for hungry spiders.  Seriously, crab spiders are extraordinarily good at camouflage.  Art thought the Montana here is most likely a female.  Ya.  Hey, I'll take whatever photos I can get.  This is one of my better ones.

ps  - I found Ed Nieuwenhuys' Australian crab spider page to be fantastic.

Montana crescent ~ 07/02/14 ~ Donner Pass

male Montana crescent

male Phyciodes pulchella montana (formerly Phyciodes campestris montana)

If I wasn't careful, I might mistake the topside (dorsal) for a female Mylitta crescent!  Technically this is a subspecies of the field crescent, but considering I won't see this anywhere near where I live, I prefer to think of it as being a different entity entirely.  Our Monterey County field crescents (Phyciodes pulchella pulchella) are much darker than this, looking like a predominantly dark brown butterfly vs. an orange one.

Mylitta crescent ~ 10/09/13 ~ Elkhorn Slough

Mylitta crescent
Phyciodes mylitta mylitta

for more information, click here and here

Eh, crescents and checkerspots are somewhat challenging to ID.  They're incredibly variable and can look like each other.  For me, I use the row of dots on the hindwing to know for sure it's a crescent; checkerspots never have the dots, which, unfortunately, makes it confusing to remember.  A funny thing about these butterflies, I find IDing them on the wing much easier to do than from photographs.  The crescents are smaller and a bit more erratic in their flight compared to checkerspots.

I have a question for you:  Does anyone know the function, if any, of the colorful antennal clubs often found on various insects?  This discussion came up on my black burying beetle post.

field crescent ~ 05/31/13 ~ Hatton Canyon

field crescent

Phyciodes pulchella (aka P. campestris, P. pratensis)

more information

Grrr. All these naming variations are starting to really annoy me.  Once again, the common name is the best identifier.  BugGuide has a succinct explanation for why the multiple sp. names of the field crescent exist.  Based on what Chris Tenney told me, I knew this was the darker field crescent, as opposed to the orange and highly variable Mylitta crescent, which we also saw on this outing. Underside, they're both a patterned pale orange.  However, the orange-tipped antennae (click on pic to enlarge) tripped me up upon closer inspection. Even Jeffrey Glassberg in his multiple books has changed his tune about field crescents always having black antennal tips - they don't always.  It's posts like this that make me question why I'm even bothering with Nature ID.  Sigh.

Mylitta crescent ~ 09/02/10 ~ Harkins Slough

female Mylitta crescent
female Phyciodes mylitta mylitta

As I visited a friend where she works at an organic farm, I was extremely pleased to see numerous butterflies next to the fields. The farm owner does not use Btk. I once killed an entire stock of cabbage whites (don't ask why I was raising these butterflies) by feeding them washed, organic cabbage from the grocer after depleting my home-grown supply. Many people don't realize "organic" may still mean pesticides are used. Btk is a very popular biological pesticide. To read more of my rambling thoughts on this, check out this other post.

I find crescent butterflies very difficult to distinguish between species, because the wing patterns are highly variable within species. I was tempted to call this the montana subspecies of the field crescent (P. campestris aka P. pulchella - again, why is there a need to rename species already described?). However, besides the obvious elevation difference, Glassberg notes field crescents have dark brown or black antennal tips, which is not the case with my specimen above.