Mourning Cloak - Butterfly Laguna de Santa Rosa

At Laguna de Santa Rosa we spotted several Mourning Cloak butterflies feeding from ornamental fruit tree blossoms. First shot is of the underwing, and shows how deftly the butterfly can bend the proboscis to sip from the flower's nectary. The underwing is brown, trimmed with a white border. When the Mourning Cloak stops for a rest, perhaps landing on the trunk of a tree, the brown underwing makes it invisible to predators.

Second shot from above shows the the significant wear to the wings. Fresher specimens have more yellow color on the wing border, but wear leaves a faded look, as here.

The Mourning Cloak is very widely distributed in the U.S., and is in a group of brush-footed butterflies called Tortoiseshells. Host plant in the Laguna would likely be the willows.

My favorite sources for local butterfly information are Bob Stewart's Common Butterflies of California, and the Shapiro/Maolis Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco and Sacramento Valley Regions.