Bug Encyclopedia
Search and identify bugs & insects — beetles, butterflies, moths, ants, bees, spiders and more — with size, habitat, danger, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Mourning Cloak
A dark, velvety maroon-brown butterfly edged with a ragged cream-yellow border and a row of iridescent blue spots, notable for overwintering as an adult and often being one of the very first butterflies seen flying in early spring.
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Regal Fritillary
A large, showy prairie butterfly with bright orange forewings and dramatically contrasting black hindwings dotted with rows of white and cream spots.
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Little Wood-Satyr
A small, weak-flying brown butterfly with two prominent yellow-ringed eyespots on each wing, common along shaded woodland edges in late spring.
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Cloudless Sulphur
A large, bright lemon-yellow butterfly that flies with strong, direct wingbeats and rarely shows any dark markings, giving it an almost uniformly 'cloudless' appearance.
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Great Southern White
A crisp white butterfly with contrasting black-and-white checkered wingtips, often seen in large numbers along coastal habitats and open fields of the southern United States.
butterflyPipevine Swallowtail Caterpillar
A dark, velvety caterpillar studded with fleshy orange-tipped tubercles that feeds exclusively on pipevine, storing its host plant's chemistry for later defense as a butterfly.
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Common Wood-Nymph
A large brown grassland butterfly with a bold yellow patch and one or two prominent black eyespots on the forewing, known for its bouncing, low-to-the-ground flight.
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White Admiral
A large, dark butterfly crossed by a bold white band on both wings, the northern form of the same species that produces the iridescent blue Red-spotted Purple farther south.
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Sleepy Orange
A small, deep orange sulphur butterfly with dark wing borders and a low, wandering flight, named for a faint dark mark that suggests a half-closed, sleepy eye.
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Little Yellow
A tiny, pale lemon-yellow butterfly with a thin, crisp black wing border, fluttering close to the ground in fields and roadsides across the southern and eastern United States.
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Great Spangled Fritillary
A large, robust orange butterfly with bold black markings above and a striking array of large silvery spangles on a tawny-brown underside, closely tied to woodland violets.
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Common Ringlet
A small, plain buff-orange satyr butterfly of open grassy places, notable for its understated coloring and Holarctic distribution spanning North America, Europe, and Asia.
butterflyCabbage White Caterpillar
A velvety, bright green caterpillar with a faint yellow stripe down its back, the larval stage of the common white butterfly seen fluttering around vegetable gardens.
caterpillar-larva
Checkered White
A white butterfly patterned with irregular gray-black checkered spots, commonly fluttering low over open, sunny, weedy fields across much of North America.
butterflyMadagascan Sunset Moth
A day-flying moth with iridescent wings that shimmer through bands of green, blue, red, and gold, so vividly colored that it is frequently mistaken for a butterfly despite being a true moth.
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Pipevine Swallowtail
A striking black swallowtail with iridescent blue-green hindwings and a row of round orange spots beneath, whose toxin-sequestering caterpillars make it a model for several butterfly mimics.
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Clouded Sulphur
A medium-sized pale yellow butterfly with crisp black wing borders, commonly seen fluttering low over clover fields and roadside meadows across North America.
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Orange-barred Sulphur
One of the largest sulphur butterflies, bright yellow with a bold band of deep orange across the forewing and a solid orange wash on the hindwing in males.
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American Copper
A small, bright orange-and-black butterfly with fiery copper-colored forewings and dusky gray hindwings edged in orange, commonly seen darting low over weedy fields and vacant lots.
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Pearl Crescent
A small, orange-and-black checkered butterfly that is one of the most abundant and widespread species in open fields across the continent, easily recognized by its crescent-shaped pale marking on the hindwing underside.
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Falcate Orangetip
An early-spring white butterfly whose males flash bright orange wingtips, while both sexes show a distinctive hooked (falcate) forewing shape and marbled green underside pattern.
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Trichogramma Wasp
Barely larger than a speck of dust, the trichogramma wasp is one of the tiniest insects known. These minute parasitoids lay their eggs inside the eggs of moths and butterflies.
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Red-spotted Purple
A large, iridescent blue-black butterfly lacking tails, notable for closely mimicking the unpalatable Pipevine Swallowtail, with rows of red-orange spots visible along the underside wing margins.
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Northern Pearly-eye
A shade-loving brown woodland butterfly with rows of dark, pale-ringed eyespots, more often seen resting on tree trunks in forest gaps than flying in open sun.
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