These are California Tortoiseshells (Nymphalis californica) a butterfly I'd never seen until the evening before. The next day we revisited the South Tuolumne River then the Middle Tuolumne River. We found puddle parties of 300-600 butterflies about every 30-50 along the river. We estimated we saw between 5000- 10,000 California Tortoiseshells on June the 18th! In the 12 years of butterfly watching I have never seen so many butterflies in a single day. To walk along the river with swarms of 300-600 butterflies flying around you was pretty amazing!
California Tortoiseshells can be rare some years as they explode some years in certain spots we were lucky to be at the right spot. The host plant is Ceanothus which we saw everywhere in bloom, likely three species of it during our trip. I never did find any sign of caterpillars.
Just a small number of butterflies in a puddle party. Males are usually the ones in the puddles. These butterflies do not visit flowers, as we never saw a single one on flowers. I revisited the same site two days later and found only about 100 butterflies left, the rest must have moved on.
Lorquin's Admiral (Limenitis lorquini) another new butterfly for me! I've seen the Weidemeyer's Admiral (L. weidemeyerii) before, but not this one. We saw good numbers of them, likely several hundred during our trip in the Yosemite area.
These look a lot like the California Sister, but smaller you see some of them on another post soon.
One of the Mariposa Lilies we found in a meadow along Evergreen Road.
