I had a nice evening surveying Lake Lawtonka and surrounding areas. I was hoping to find some good birds, but came up short. The bugs proved to be interesting though. Lots of Leps and Odonates moving about. I captured some decent photos and thought I would share some of them. The first a Gemmed Satyr which was actually the last butterfly I found just happened to be a county record, woohoo! I'd never seen one and didn't figure out its identity until I got home.
Another species a little west of its range, although recorded plenty of times in the county were a couple of Red-spotted Purples. They sat patiently for me and allowed some pretty sharp photos. This species is just beautiful, this was the first time I was actually able to photograph the underwing which would be the first photo in the sequence below.
There were also plenty of Viceroys about, nothing really unusual but this is the best photo of this species that I have taken, so I threw it in there just for fun.
On to the more challenging specimens. I found two skippers both of which I am struggling to identify. So I'm leaving it up to the experts, let me know what you think.