Pearl Crescent

Phyciodes tharos

You’ll find this small orange butterfly throughout Texas almost all year long. I see it more in the Houston area than I did in West Texas, but it was common there, as well. It usually flies low to the ground and feeds on a variety of flowers in both fields and gardens.

I find it easy to distinguish from the other crescents and checkerspots in Texas thanks to the broader orange markings near the end of the forewing. Similar butterflies tend to have more distinct segmentation of the orange bars at that same spot.

Males and females have slightly different markings on the underside of the wings with the males having fewer brown markings on the pale yellow portion of the hindwing than the females.