December 2022 Sightings

Monarchs laying eggs on Calotropis

(13-243). Sunny and temps 68-75. Flowering sleepy morning brought out the butterflies - especially the Mallow Scrub-Hairstreaks which use it as a host plant.

Lack of sunshine didn’t keep butterflies from flying during a warm and humid day. 54 species in December was a nice day of finds.

Butterflies seen in our yard over the past three days following some cold wet weather.

We have enjoyed all these species common to our yard daily for a couple of weeks along with a surprise Sleepy Orange today. It was about 80 degrees with full sun. The Little Yellow’s behavior suggested it was trying to mate with the Cloudless Sulphur.

We saw the White Wagtail and on the way out of the park stopped to check out the butterflies. It was about 80 degrees with full sun.

11am to 5 pm
low 80s partly sunny, wind 15-20 s-sse

10am to 3pm. mid 80s partly cloudy

1pm to 4pm

(17-287). Warm and sunny. Pretty eventful day for mid-December in south central Florida. All pictures by Tim Adams.

Interesting to watch the daily changes in late fall

Monarchs have been laying eggs in recent weeks. This is the result. Look for chrysales later.

A little sun, a little nectar as we’ve had no freeze yet, but 21 degrees predicted for Christmas Eve morning!

While preparing for an evening winter storm we noted an (uncommon) Mexican Yellow in our yard. Temperature in late afternoon was 75 degrees and sunny. But in the next 12-14 hours a cold front blasted through with an extreme drop in temperature to 28 degrees!

first butterfly to show up after two freezing nights