Butterflies of the Sabinal River Valley

Butterflies

Juniper (3 on right) and Gray Hairstreaks

If you like butterfly pictures, be sure to see our new Butterfly Photos pages, where they are sorted to family groups.

Longtailed Skipper

There is a tremendous diversity of butterflies locally. Who, in their youth, didn't look at butterflies with marvel? Fortunately, in recent years, many have let the "child within" out, and now butterflies are enjoying popularity heretofore unknown. There are very good books, websites, and even local festivals (in Concan - Nature Quest in April), focusing on butterflies.

Also, many native plant nurseries and societies exist which are very aware of which native plants attract dozens and dozens of butterflies. Serious study of butterflies in almost any county will add new records to our pool of knowledge about them.

Zebra Longwing

There have been many great men who collected butterflies. Most were looked at in pith helmet and net, with raised eyebrows, as eccentrics, but are now considered icons by lepidopterists. Now it is even almost "cool" to be into them! Butterflies are a pursuit endlessly fascinating and beautiful.

There are already official lists of all the butterflies known from Uvalde and Bandera counties easily available on the Web. But, they don't cite what exactly might be in the Sabinal River Valley, or in the Utopia area for instance. Just a "county" breakdown (as well as every county in every state in the U.S.!). These lists tell us what we should be seeing however, and are most useful. Note that they are incomplete and anyone with a modern butterfly field guide could come here and add new species to the county list. I wouldn't be surprised if over 150 species could be found just in the Sabinal River Valley!

Great Purple Hairstreak

If you want to have just one book on the shelf about butterflies, probably the best single book to get for ID purposes for OUR AREA here is the "Kaufman Focus Guide" to Butterflies of North America, by Jim Brock & Kenn Kaufman. It has thousands of great photographs of live ones, taken in the field, the way we see them with range maps, much like a good bird guide.

Blue-eyed Sailor, 1st Bandera co. record at Cypress Hollow Sept. 23, 2007

References and Links

For further study, there are many excellent butterfly websites from which you can identify virtually anything you find. Here are a few links to get you started ... from here, you can find anything in the whole wide world web. You may wish to bookmark these to visit later, as these links will take you off of this site.

Butterflies of America

The above site covers the Americas which means not just the U.S.

N.A.B.A. - South Texas

N.A.B.A. (North America Butterfly Assc.

Xerces Society

Wildflower Checklist and Photos

Native Plant Society of Texas (Kerrville Chapter)

Red Rim