Another year passes and we were again off to the Lower Rio Grande Valley in 2016 for butterflies and the joint NABA Meeting and Texas Butterfly festival. We'd been there the year before, two years before that, and four years earlier on my first visit. My friend Rebecca and I met up again this time with our friend, Steve, and for the last few days my sister, Jenifer, on another excellent trip in search of some good butterflies. From our base at the Alamo Inn B&B, we took day trips to a number of good sites, including Santa Ana NWR, Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, Estero Llano Grande State Park, Resaca de la Palma State Park, Falcon State Park, Rio Rico Road, Yutturia Tract, and La Sal del Rey with multiple visits to the National Butterfly Center of the North American Butterfly Association (NABA). This time we arrived after a fairly long dry spell, which meant some of the flowers weren't in bloom and the butterfly species were a bit different than in past visits. We regularly ran into a number of other butterflying friends who helped us track down almost 100 butterfly species, of which three were new for me and everybody else got at least one lifer species.

The following pages show some of the pictures from the trip. This first page has pictures of some of the other interesting creatures we saw on the trip, with butterfly pictures are on the next 3 pages. Page 2 has the Swallowtails (Papilionidae), Whites and Sulphurs (Pieridae), Hairstreaks and Blues (Lycaenidae), and Metalmarks (Riodinidae); Page 3 the Brushfoots (Nymphalidae); and Page 4 the Skippers (Hesperiidae).

Click on any of the thumbnails to view a larger version in a separate window.