Yesterday, finally a day that turned into a sunny day, we were up on the land. My husband did a first pass at mowing the vineyard and I was walking the rows to clean up the canes that we had laid down. On one of the rows I saw this butterfly, out came the camera and the snapping began. This butterfly was easily disturbed so I did my best imitation of a mannequin while I took the pictures. Here is one that came out pretty good.
All I had to do was to identify it. This is easy, I thought because I had a lot of hits when I put in "eastern butterfly that looks like the American Copper Butterfly". I immediately thought that my butterfly picture was of the Painted Lady (
Vanessa cardui) and I began to blog about it. Then on the
Adirondacks Forever Wild site that I was looking at, there was information stating that the Painted Lady has quite a similar appearance to the American Lady! When I checked the American Lady identification, it turned out that this butterfly is indeed an American Lady Butterfly. The one obvious identifying mark that can distinguish the American Lady from the Painted Lady is the white spot on the orange background on the forewing. That's how I came to realize that my photo was of the American Lady.
This is what I love about working in the vineyard. I love seeing these unexpected sightings and learning something new. It's the cherry on top of the sundae for me.
References:
1. A very good site with a lot of photos and information is the:
Butterflies and Moths of North America.
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