Weekend Garden Party: Some Old Friends, Some New Sightings, and A Few Strange Ones From Beyond the Fringe

Over the past forty-eight hours, we have had a truly interesting assortment of visitors. Some came to the garden proper. Others were fluttering through and around the sloping hillside of weeds and grass and thistle and violets just above the garden. While the garden is butterfly central for us, we know our flying friends have lots of options  when it comes to butterflies getting what they need around the beautiful Cumberland Plateau. Some butterflies, especially some of the smaller ones, prefer to just fly by or touch down too briefly to be captured on camera. Sometimes, we gently follow, hoping  catch them when they alight in the grass. This past weekend we had unusual success with those, as well as some beautiful returnees to the garden. We though we would share them. 
First up is a butterfly we saw as a flash of yellow from the dining room window. We have this one tentatively identified as the Orange Sulphur. Love the eyes from another planet, or  at least another phylum!

Then, there appeared to be a flying dead leaf. It wasn't until we could blow it up that we saw it was a peculiar moth called the Lesser Grapevine Looper, which hangs upside down in grass and bends its abdomen over like it's Simone Biles to better imitate a leaf stem.

Honestly, this was all in the space of 15 minutes. We then saw a tiny white butterfly, skimming the thistle-tops up the hill. We followed it and was fortunate to have the little Eastern Tailed-Blue rest long enough with its wings open (about an inch across) to get the following shot 

For good measure, we have this last unidentified moth spotted as we walked to the back door. 

Meanwhile, back in the garden...

The most unusual visitor we had this weekend was the Jimmy Durante of butterflies, the American Snout. We have now seen him a few times around the neighborhood (more in another post), but Friday he just wanted a cool rest on the Goldenrod. 

The most exciting addition to our sightings list is the Variegated Fritillary, which landed in the panestraw border. 

Winning the nice to see you this year award is a beautiful little butterfly called the Buckeye. 

One of our favorite little ones is the Pearl Crescent, below, which can hide in the center of a daisy. It loves, marigolds, daisies, and black-eyed susan. 

Another first-time returnee is the Cabbage White.

And now let us talk of Skippers. Skippers are the sparrows of butterflies, in that there are numerous varieties that are often hard to distinguish, and in that they are under-appreciated. We confess that we are still learning to distinguish the dozen or so varieties, partly because they are often similar, but also because their appearance changes dramatically based on the angle. The two shots below are the same skipper, just from different angles. 

Here are some others from the weekend. We submit these to the North American Butterfly and Moth Association for verified identification. 

There is one Skipper that we instantly know. The Silver-Spotted, below, is our most constant visitor, in the garden almost every day, morning and afternoon. It's nice to always have at least one butterfly waiting for you.  Here is a nice shot, showing his curled proboscis ready for action. 

For the finish we have save the delightfully hybrid Hummingbird Hawk-Moth enjoying the new Butterfly Bush we planted this morning. It is similar to the Snowberry Clearwing, but a little smaller, and with white legs and no bee-like stripe across the lower back. Thanks for sharing our tour of our weekend visitors!