{"id":419,"date":"2006-02-18T14:20:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-18T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/fire\/2006\/02\/18\/gray-hairstreak-revealed\/"},"modified":"2008-04-15T21:50:05","modified_gmt":"2008-04-16T04:50:05","slug":"gray-hairstreak-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2006\/02\/18\/gray-hairstreak-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Gray Hairstreak Revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t see too many butterflies in the drought-stricken spring of 2006 in Tucson, Arizona, but given how common <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2006\/01\/27\/gray-hairstreak-butterflies\/\">Gray Hairstreaks (Strymon melinus)<\/a> are here in Tucson, I was not surprised to see one already emerged by February of 2006.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2006\/February\/Strymon-melinus-3.jpg\" alt=\"Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)\" title=\"Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)\" width=\"480\" height=\"365\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Even though the spring of 2006 was dry and brown, this dainty gray butterfly had happily managed to find some blooming native wildflowers in the Tucson Botanical Garden&#8217;s wildflower garden. The Gray Hairstreak rested for a moment between flowers on a lupine leaf, where it did something unusual for a hairstreak butterfly, it opened its wings while perched and allowed me to get a photograph of its dorsal wing surfaces!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2006\/February\/Strymon-melinus-2.jpg\" alt=\"Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)\" title=\"Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)\" width=\"480\" height=\"365\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As soon as they land, these butterflies will usually close their wings, so I had never realized how hairy their backs are, or how much darker their dorsal wing surfaces are when compared to their pale gray ventral wing surfaces. Now if I could just find <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2006\/02\/09\/great-purple-hairstreak\/\">one of the more colorful hairstreaks<\/a> that was as cooperative!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t see too many butterflies in the drought-stricken spring of 2006 in Tucson, Arizona, but given how common Gray Hairstreaks (Strymon melinus) are here in Tucson, I was not surprised to see one already emerged by February of 2006. Even though the spring of 2006 was dry and brown, this dainty gray butterfly had&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2006\/02\/18\/gray-hairstreak-revealed\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More &rarr; <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona-butterflies-and-moths","category-arizona-invertebrates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}