Painted Lady...Appetizers (Crowley County)

[Dan Stringer]

This goes to Dave Leatherman's seeking info on birds eating Painted Lady butterflies. I'm kind of glad he brought it up, because I had a bird behavior moment that I can't stop thinking about:

On Monday I left at dark thirty and covered a lot of ground in Crowley, Otero, Bent, and Kiowa Counties, Painted Lady butterflies were everywhere I went, in greater numbers than I'd seen in the Denver area. It made bird-spotting very difficult, every butterfly movement was a bird for a split second.

At Lake Meredith (Crowley Co), as I was hiking the north shore going eastward, a Peregrine Falcon took off from a tree ahead of me and went out over the water only about 60 feet up. I put my binoculars on it and just when I thought it was going to be a typically fast, powerful, mean-spirited falcon and fly upwards to dive-bomb a gull or something, it slowed and then stalled to grab a Painted Lady in it's bill. After going wide-eyed over that move, I realized that while ignoring the butterflies all over the ground, it had seen this one over the lake and went straight to it. Then, still flying slowly for a Peregrine, it angled over, feet went up, and it grabbed another one, this time in it's claws. It went out of binocular view after I saw it take a total of three butterflies, in fairly graceful fashion, then went up and out quickly like a Peregrine Falcon should.

Dan Stringer

Larkspur, CO