Florida Butterflies - Gulf Fritillary and White Peacock

We spend most of our time looking at birds when in Florida, but it's pretty hard to ignore the dragonflies and butterflies.

These 2 species are in the family Nymphalidae, the brush-footed butterflies. The front feet are quite small in this family, which also goes by the named "Four-footed Butterflies". The brush-foots are the largest butterfly family, with over 6,000 species!

At my cousin's condo we watched a number of bright orange butterflies nectaring on flowers near an open grassy area. Had no clue what they were, and that very day Jackie Sones wrote from her Bodega Head blog about the Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae, which proved to be the very same species I photographed. It's in the subfamilyHeliconiinae (Heliconians and Fritillaries). Here's the top view. Note the 3 white dots surrounded by black on the forewing:

Often times a butterfly's underwing pattern is just at striking, and it was certainly true for the Gulf Fritillary:

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​The Gulf-footed Fritillary is very common across the southern U.S., especially in the Southeast. Large numbers migrate to Florida. Its range extends all through Central America and into South America.

Another brush-foot that we saw at many locations was the White Peacock, Anartia jatrophe. The genus Anartia,the Peacocks, has only 5 species. Their tribe is Victorinini. This individual was patrolling an area along the shore of the Venice Rookery:

The White Peacock is a tropical species, with a range from Argentina and all through to Mexico, and like some tropical birds the range includes South Texas and Florida.

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