Buckeye

My first Common Buckeye/Junonia coenia butterfly of the year, spotted yesterday.

I didn’t see a single one of these last year. I wondered if this was because of the removal from Green-Wood of the butterfly-crack Buddleja plants at Valley Water. Butterfly Bush is very appealing to adult butterflies, but as a non-indigenous species it does not provide food for any caterpillars.

As it happened, there were only 8 Common Buckeye iNat observations in NYC for all of 2023 on iNat. A bust year, followed by a boom…?

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A couple of generous donors alerted me to a problem with the custom part of my donations page, which has now been fixed.