Following is a list of butterflies found in Hawaii, bold indicates native species, gray indicates the species I did not see:
Erionota thrax - Banana Skipper
Hylephila phyleus - Fiery Skipper
Papilio xuthus - Asian Swallowtail
Pieris rapae - Cabbage White
Pheobis agarithe - Large Orange Sulphur
Brephidium exilis - Western Pygmy Blue
Lampides boeticus - Long-tailed Blue
Udara blackburnii - Hawaiian (aka Blackburn's or Koa) Blue
Zizina otis - Lesser Grass-blue
Strymon bazochii - Lantana Scrub-hairstreak
Tmolus echion - Red-spotted Hairstreak
Vanessa cardui - Painted Lady
Vanessa virginiensis - American Lady
Vanessa tameamea - Kamehameha Butterfly
Vanessa atalanta - Red Admiral
Agraulis vanillae - Gulf Fritillary
Danaus plexippus - Monarch
I photographed all except the Monarch (saw several in various places around the island) and the Large Orange Sulphur (saw several throughout the area around Kealakekua Bay).
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| View of Kealakekua Bay and the Captain Cook Monument (south of Kona) |
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| Asian Swallowtail on Bougainvillea - saw two of these and neither of them stopped fluttering long enough to get a decent shot. |
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| The only proof I have that I saw a Gulf Fritillary! I actually saw a few of them, but none landed long enough for a clear photo. |
At Punalu'u Black Sands Beach Park, there were quite a few people gathered around who probably wondered why I only took a few photos of this:
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| Green Sea Turtle on Punalu'u Black Sand Beach (where I found all the Long-tailed Blues) |
And then went back to photographing these Long-tailed Blues basking and ovipositing on Purple Bushbean (Macroptilium atropurpureum):
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| Nearly every flower head was loaded with eggs from the Long-tailed Blues |
At Honokahau Bay, I found possibly hundreds of Western Pygmy Blues fluttering over what I think is pickleweed. Most seemed to be ovipositing; I'm not sure if I saw any males. They were just on the other side (pond side) of a ridge of sand between the bay and Aimakapa Fishpond, where I also saw some Hawaiian Coots, three Black-crowned Night Herons, and a bunch of Cattle Egrets.
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| Near where all the pygmy blues were, I spotted this Cabbage White |
Back at the hotel in Kona, I decided to wander through the parking lot and see if I could find any butterflies on the lantana flowers scattered throughout the lot. I thought I should find some Fiery Skippers somewhere nearby, since the lawn grass all around the hotel is a common host plant for them. I had hoped to also see the two butterflies intentionally introduced to control the lantana (a popular garden flower that has become a weed), but no such luck. Finally, on the very last lantana bush at the far end of the parking lot, I found two female and three male Fiery Skippers.
After driving to the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and viewing Kilauea spewing a sulfur-laden steam plume, we drove a couple miles northwest to the Kipuka Puaulu trail for a 1 mile loop hike through an old forest grove surrounded by younger lava flows (a Kipuka is by definition an island of older vegetation/forests surrounded by more recent lava flows).
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| The sign at the beginning of the trail |
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| My first sighting of the beautiful, native Hawaiian butterfly: the Kamehameha (Vanessa tameamea) |
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| The only photo I managed to take with it's wings open. I had to continuously snap photos until I caught the split-second flash when it opened and closed its wings. |
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| My first Hawaiian Blue (or Blackburn's Blue). This one, and the few I saw afterwards, were rather faded. Only a light dusting of green remained from the normally solid green under-wings. Plus I believe these were all females, so they were mostly brown on the dorsal side, instead of blue. |
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| Hawaiian Blue on a Koa tree (it's host plant). It was rather windy so I couldn't get it entirely in focus. |
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| American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis) |
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| Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) at the lookout ten miles up the flank of Mauna Loa |
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| Lava glowing in the dark, from the Pu'u O'o Crater, which has been producing the most recent flows (past 20 years), and I believe it is part of Kilauea. |
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| Lava in the distance, with a steam trail showing the path of the flow. Lava rock in the foreground is mostly less than 2 years old. |
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| O'hia tree with Kilauea in the background |
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| Man-of-war jellyfish (a tiny one on Honokahau Beach) |
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| Tiny sand crab of some sort, the only reason I saw it was because it moved! |
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| Another sand crab on Honokahau Beach |
