MISSION — Mary Jane Krotzer had already spotted a guava skipper.
She probably would never have seen the diminutive butterfly sporting a captivating blue jacket in her native Alabama, and it’s one of many reasons she’s in the Valley for the Texas Butterfly Festival.
“I have not been to the festival but I have been to the Valley twice,” said the retired biology professor of Stillman College.
“There are a couple of reasons I’m here, both the diversity of butterflies and the opportunity to meet people interested in some of the things we are,” she said, gesturing to her husband who was aiming his camera at clouds of queen butterflies clustering around thick stands of crucita mistflower.
“He saw a gold-spotted aguna down by Spike the Tortoise,” she said. “We’ve been telling everyone.”
Krotzer and her husband are among 100 attendees who are flying in from throughout the United States for the Festival which begins today and continues through Tuesday. The tours begin Sunday and will take nature lovers as far west as Falcon State Park and east to Brownsville and perhaps even Boca Chica.
Registration for the tours is closed. However, today is the annual Community Day in which the public can come to the Center free of charge and enjoy a variety of activities, including games and crafts activities for kids.
“We have all kinds of activities planned for the kids, educational and fun activities,” said Luciano Guerra, photographer, educator and social media outreach specialist.
“We have people working on the gardens and making it as beautiful as possible,” Guerra said. “We have the games and some of the fun things and the crafts. We’ll have speakers talking about Spike the Tortoise. We’ll have somebody in the bird feeding area talking about the different birds that we have here in the Rio Grande Valley.’
Guides will also be available in the main gardens to point out different butterflies to visitors.
“We have gift shops that are going to be full of all kinds of new items,” Guerra said. “We’re going to have food vendors, people selling T-shirts and jewelry, and different butterfly related items.”
The festival has become an annual favorite for nature lovers everywhere; the pandemic shut it down two years ago, and numbers were down last year.
In the time of COVID, the world’s societies seemed to plunge into dark abysmal places of uncertainty and death. In the time of resurrection, butterflies and nature lovers are coming together once again, and it’s turning out to be a fine season for butterflies.
“It looks awesome this year,” Guerra said. “We’ve had 104 species of butterflies this month including many rarities including a second U.S. record, and there are butterflies all over the place.”
Guerra said the Texas Butterfly Festival happens during the peak season of butterflies here in the Rio Grande Valley.
“The reason we hold it during the last weekend in October and the first week in November is because we have the most butterflies here,” he said. “We can have 100 or 120 species of butterflies here during the festival. It’s important to butterflies, because it’s one way for us to promote the Rio Grande Valley and promote the hundreds of species of butterflies that have been recorded here at the National Butterfly Center over the years.”
Last week Guerra strolled through gardens pulsating with butterflies hovering, dancing, shimmering as in a whirling mist, with the sun lighting up thick heads of goldenrod and dusty blue crucita mistflower. Queen butterflies seems locked in some hypnotic state with their proboscises sunk deep into flower to feed on copious amounts of nectar. Fiery skippers sat stoically, frozen for a time as they fed; bordered patches shook nervously as they rotated around flower heads, the bright golden flashes on their wings glowing from dark backgrounds.
“The reason the Rio Grande Valley is a hotspot for butterflies is for a couple of reasons,” Guerra said. “One is our proximity to Mexico and also our temperate climate. Butterflies are cold-blooded. They cannot fly when it’s too cold or too cloudy. We like to say they are solar powered because the sun heats them up enough so they can fly. Today’s a nice warm day.”
Friday it was a little cooler, a little cloudy, and a strong wind blew. But nature lovers and butterflies were coming together at the Center for an almost sacred reunion, a joining of two worlds for a treasured moment.
“There’s a Lantana scrub hairstreak,” someone called, drawing four others quickly to his location whether they watched and photographed with quiet respect and admiration a Valley specialty on a flower. It was one of several specialties that nature lovers will find here not only in the next few days, but weeks to come.
“It’s a banner year,” Guerra said. “One of the reasons is this time of year our crucity is bloom and it’s a great nectar plant. Also those strong winds we had from the southeast earlier in the week, we believe those strong winds blew in some butterflies from Mexico.”
In this time of resurrection, the arrival of butterflies to feed and bear young in so many dazzling renditions of metamorphosis seems to a be a poignant reminder from Mother Earth that life always revitalizes itself.
