The Latest

October 31, 2025 - Added several photos to the large orange sulphur page, as I've finally been able to figure out its favored food plant in Palm Desert and really zero in on the life cycle. I put up a new (better) egg photo, and pretty much all the larval instars as far as I could discern them. This is a species that can go through the egg and caterpillar stages rapidly. I get cloudless sulphurs in my yard daily, and have for years, so I was really interested in seeing subtle differences in the immature stages between these two related sulphurs. I wasn't disappointed as I watched the caterpillars develop. Hopefully I'll get several chrysalises this year - I've seen online photos and they are also different in interesting ways.

September 11, 2025 - I did some light editing to reflect what I currently know about the dark, fall-flying mormo metalmark best known locally from the Big Bear area, as well as Euphilotes dammersi, also a fall-flying buckwheat feeder. I'm working on a lot of things besides this website, so apologies for that. But it's been a weird, dry year and I'm trying to make the most of it. The backyard butterfly world has been great! Hope all who read this are doing well in these trying times.

July 2, 2025 - Spent most of June in the San Bernardino Mountains, staying in Moonridge specifically and going out everyday. I'm working on what could eventually be a book about the butterflies of the Big Bear area. Not just identification, but rather an emphasis on the ecological context (so plant associations, life cycle timing, fooling predators, etc.). Long story. Most of my attention has been going towards that project, but for now on this website, here's a few new things: on the hedgerow hairstreak, there is an egg photo from Lake Arrowhead; on the page for the hoary comma scroll down for both an egg and a caterpillar; and for Leussler's branded skipper there's an egg as well. The latter egg surprised me with its texture and I think it's really cool.

May 24, 2025 - Bugue Magazine is the brainchild of talented illustrator and garden afficionado Liana Jegers. All three issues she's created so far are really well done. If you pick up the latest issue - number 3 - there is a short article I wrote with nice illustrations by Liana. So do yourself a solid and click on the image above and get caught up on all the big news from Liana's garden, which - I promise - has many cool bugs!

I've also added a photo of the chrysalis of Moss's elfin, which completes the documentation of the lifecycle here.

May 4, 2025 - The caterpillar of Moss's elfin is small and becomes bright red - odd for a butterfly that is rather drab as an adult. It also feeds on a colorful succulent, Sedum spathulifolium. Check out the egg, too.

April 27, 2025 - I've been out in the field a lot lately as the butterfly season has finally begun to get underway. I have some new photos of Moss's elfin, thanks to Seth Mueller, who found them flying several days ago. Overall, this has been a poor year for butterflies because of very dry conditions. Some places are better than others, with the deserts having received little to no rain for about a year. Lower to middle elevations of the San Bernardinos and San Jacintos are much better but still below normal for butterfly activity. Perhaps this is a year we get good summer rains.

Here is a pdf for those looking for information about our book on the Butterflies and Skippers of Joshua Tree National Park. To order, click here. It's available at select bookstores as well, including the kiosks at the National Park itself. If you have questions, email me at denbugg AT hotmail.com.

Introduction

Nearly all these photographs of butterflies and their host plants were taken either in my garden, the local park, or (most often) in wild areas within a few hours of my home in Long Beach, California. Butterflies are a life-long interest of mine, and I started photographing them seriously beginning in the summer of 2005. I've listed on six pages - one for each family represented locally - all the butterflies in my area (to subspecies level) and their larval food plants, with links to pages I've created for each butterfly. Some of these are rarely seen and/or are endangered species, and thus a challenge to find and photograph, but I've included them on the list if they fly in this region (as a breeding resident). In fact, the challenging or obscure butterflies are often the most interesting. There are, of course, various difficulties with creating a comprehensive list to subspecies level, and so it tends to evolve as I learn more or with taxonomic changes*.

In my garden I may see fifteen or so different species in a typical year (I've seen twenty-five species there over the years). But by day-tripping to various places no more than a few hours' drive from my house, I can multiply this number many times over. In fact, there currently are 273 different butterflies (species/subspecies) that I've listed for our area. My goal is eventually to see and photograph them all (I have 212 of 273 as of May 2025), as well as most of their larval food plants. Some butterflies that are very rare or only occasionally stray into our area may be common in Arizona, and I've included a few photographs from there.

The past few years I've become more interested in all the stages of the butterfly life cycle, so there has been more emphasis lately on eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalises. After all, a butterfly is more than just the adult stage of its life cycle. Documenting the life history of different species photographically is fun, and learning how each butterfly has evolved in order to survive the challenges living things face is always enlightening.

Southern California is an incredibly diverse place to explore and enjoy the natural world. Mountain forests and meadows, beaches and wetlands, grasslands, our high and low deserts, even islands - all are within reach with their various lepidopterous inhabitants. I've learned to appreciate these places, and I hope my photographs help convey some of the richness of our native flora and fauna.

* By October, 2019, I had thoroughly revised my lists based partly on Ken Davenport's publication Butterflies of southern California in 2018: updating Emmel and Emmel's 1973 Butterflies of southern California. I've omitted butterflies listed in Ken's book that are outside my definition of southern California, such as those in Tulare Co. and Death Valley, as well as most non-resident strays, and extirpated or extinct taxa. My northern boundary is the nearly-straight trio of northern county lines from San Luis Obispo to Kern and San Bernardino counties. In the fall-winter of 2023 I did another round of revisions based on a lot of newer papers, and finished adding headers and brief introductions to every species page. I've also been adding much more life cycle information, and excerpts of original descriptions, which I find historically interesting.

Feel free to e-mail me: denbugg @t hotmail dot com.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to everyone for all the help and encouragement I've received over the years. Special thanks to Gordon Pratt, John F. Emmel, Ken Davenport, Jim Brock, Bill Gendron, Joe Zarki, Fred Heath, Koji Shiraiwa, John Pasko, Bruce Watts, Chris Henzlik, Mark Walker, David Horner and Andrew Kim for particularly valuable help with identifications (butterflies and plants), locations, suggestions, etc. Now that I am occasionally adding original descriptions and information about types to my pages, the work of Jonathan Pelham has been invaluable and his catalogue has been a much-appreciated resource. This website wouldn't exist without the help of a lot of dedicated people who have shared some of their hard-won knowledge, and I feel deeply indebted to them all.

Thanks also to Biodiversity Heritage Library. Many of the oldest original descriptions of California butterflies can easily be found there, and it's fantastic to have access to them.

Since April 2007.

Guide to CST