Sept. 15, 2019 - Fritillaries

We had two kinds of fritillary butterflies visiting our yard this summer. This is a Great Spangled Fritillary on a Swamp Milkweed flower. With a wingspan of 2½ to 3½ inches, it is a fairly large butterfly but still not as big as a Monarch, which has a wingspan of 3½ to 4½ inches.

FritillaryGreatSpangledSpeyeriacybeleDunningLakeItascaCounty20190712

Here’s the underside of the wings of a Great Spangled Fritillary. The wide yellow band between the two rows of white spots is a good identifying feature of this species.

FritillaryGreatSpangledSpeyeriacybeleDunningLakeItascaCounty20190713

I took a close-up of this Great Spangled Fritillary to show the interesting pattern on its eye.

FritillaryGreatSpangledSpeyeriaCybelecloseDunningLakeItascaCounty20190703

This butterfly has the same patterns on its wings as the butterfly in my first photo, except it is dark along the outer edge of the upper wing. I have read that female Great Spangled Fritillaries are darker than males so perhaps this is a female.

FritillaryGreatSpangledSpeyeriaCybeleDunningLakeItascaCounty201908104x6

The other fritillary species that I saw this summer was this Silver-bordered Fritillary. It’s a smaller butterfly, with a wingspan of 1½ to 2 inches. The caterpillars of both kinds of fritillaries prefer violets as their host plant.

FritillarySilverborderedBoloriaseleneDunningLakeItascaCounty20190802

Here’s the underside of the wings of this Silver-bordered Fritillary. The color pattern of both the upper and lower sides of the forewing are very similar. However, the underside of the hindwing, with its many white spots, looks quite different than the upper side.

FritillarySilverborderedBoloriaseleneDunningLakeItascaCounty20190802