Home › The Milkweed Butterflies › The Long-Beaks (Orange patch just beyond cell)

The Long-Beaks (Orange patch just beyond cell)

orange patch just beyond cell R + M. Expanse of wings one and three-fourths inches.

CATERPILLAR.-Length about one inch; the head is small; the last two thoracic segments are enlarged and rise in a hump above the head; the last segment of the body slopes down abruptly at the end. The color is dark velvety green with a yellow stripe down the middle of the back and along each side. The enlarged middle segment of the thorax bears two dull black tubercles ringed about with yellow at the base.

Food-plants. - Hackberry, and in the West, where hackberry does not occur, it feeds upon wolfberry. The snout butterfly has front wings that look as if their tips had been snipped off with curved scissors; it is not likely to be mistaken for any other butterfly even though it is copper-colored with white spots, for its palpi project at least a quarter of an inch straight out in front of the head; this peculiarity has given the species the unpoetical cognomen, "the snout butterfly." The under sides of the hind wings show a beautiful vague pattern of sheeny, olive brown, and ashes of roses. One of the specially interesting things about the species is that the females are hexapods while the males are quadrupeds. Just why the females need six feet when the males need only four is to us a mystery.

The snout butterfly is most erratic in its occurrence. There are records of its having appeared in swarms; but usually it is sufficiently rare in any locality to be considered a prize by the butterfly hunter. Its range is through the eastern United States with the exception of northern New England and southern Florida. It haunts river-banks and marshy places in forests and does not disdain shrubby roadsides; it is also very fond of visiting raspberry blossoms. The caterpillar has the habit of rearing the front end of its body and remaining motionless while at rest, like a sphinx caterpillar. It is a most adaptable creature. Mr. Edwards found that if its food-plant dried up it changed to a chrysalid after its third molt, when it was little more than half grown.

From such pigmy chrysalids came genuine butterflies, though somewhat small and pale. It is supposed the species winters as a butterfly. Yet I remember, when the butterfly Went flickering about me like a flame That quenched itself in roses suddenly.