chris_rorabaugh's Identifications

A solo visit 16-18 hours after the passage of Hurricane Milton, which made landfall as a Category 3 storm at Sarasota around 2100 last night. The weather at 1320 was sunny, 77 degrees ("feels like" 77), and breezy. I had intended to iNat the sandhills along both sides of 3 Bridges Road close to the northern end of the WEA, but the usual wet spot along Thunder's Crossing Road was about 40 feet wide (although only maybe 6 inches deep, and with a rocky bottom) and I chose to not chance it in my Little Red. So I returned to Gopher Road and drove to its northern end. But I saw no nectar sources, so I turned back south to the spot north of the American Kestrel nestbox, where I found several Palatka Skippers in fall 2022. I had not been back since then because the area last burned in fall 2021 and I was not expecting any nectar sources. To my surprise, the area was ablaze with Coastal Plain Honeycombhead (Balduina angustifolia), which I love because it is the primary plant for Fuller's Flower Moths (Schinia fulleri), I spent two hours here, checking probably 800+ honeycombhead flowers. I found one adult Fuller's, plus two caterpillars and one pupa presumed to be ths species. (I don't think any other butterfly or moth feeds on angustifolia).I stopped briefly at the little Redroot pond farther south, but it was a lake! I left the WEA at 1541 and headed home.

These are my cell-phone photographs, which are GPS-enabled.

A solo visit 16-18 hours after the passage of Hurricane Milton, which made landfall as a Category 3 storm at Sarasota around 2100 last night. The weather at 1320 was sunny, 77 degrees ("feels like" 77), and breezy. I had intended to iNat the sandhills along both sides of 3 Bridges Road close to the northern end of the WEA, but the usual wet spot along Thunder's Crossing Road was about 40 feet wide (although only maybe 6 inches deep, and with a rocky bottom) and I chose to not chance it in my Little Red. So I returned to Gopher Road and drove to its northern end. But I saw no nectar sources, so I turned back south to the spot north of the American Kestrel nestbox, where I found several Palatka Skippers in fall 2022. I had not been back since then because the area last burned in fall 2021 and I was not expecting any nectar sources. To my surprise, the area was ablaze with Coastal Plain Honeycombhead (Balduina angustifolia), which I love because it is the primary plant for Fuller's Flower Moths (Schinia fulleri), I spent two hours here, checking probably 800+ honeycombhead flowers. I found one adult Fuller's, plus two caterpillars and one pupa presumed to be ths species. (I don't think any other butterfly or moth feeds on angustifolia).I stopped briefly at the little Redroot pond farther south, but it was a lake! I left the WEA at 1541 and headed home.

These are my cell-phone photographs, which are GPS-enabled.

This beetle was found under log in the early morning in Morriston, FL. It was roughly 4" in length and a hexapod. It was dark black, with blue margins along its side, and had large jaws, which is a distinguishing feature of Pasimachus beetles.

https://bugguide.net/node/view/9658