I'm surprised

 

I thought anything that looked like a monarch butterfly in South Texas in the winter would be a Monarch mimic; something that looks like a Monarch, but isn’t really.  Like the Viceroy.

 

Here is my Monarch.

 

Here is a Viceroy (from the internet).

 

They look a lot alike.  The Viceroy looks almost exactly like a Monarch, but it has that line across the hindwings that the Monarch doesn’t.  (There are other differences too, but the line on the hindwings might be the most obvious.)  You can’t see all of the hindwings of my Monarch, but you can see enough to tell that they don’t have that black line.

 

Not only that, but the male and female monarch are patterned slightly differently.  See those two black spots on the hindwing of the Monarch, just to either side of the body?  It’s those two spots that make this a male Monarch.  The female has slightly bolder black lines, and it doesn’t have those two spots.

 

I thought all Monarch butterflies wintered in Mexico.  But now that I ask, I’m told that a few Monarchs over-winter here in South Texas.

 

I want to state for the record that asking a question about this butterfly doesn’t really change anything.  There are bird watchers and there are butterfly watchers.  Some people do both.  Not me though.  For all these years, looking at birds, I have resisted looking at butterflies, maintaining that I can’t afford another compulsion.  Figuring out which bird I’m looking at is challenge enough without getting distracted by a gazillion different kinds of butterflies fluttering all about.

 

I remain a birder, not a butterflier.