You got the perky part right. Talk about a common name that doesn't fit. Swing a net at one and miss, and you're in for a wild zig-zagging chase at full throttle through the nastiest weed patch they can find. If they can't shake you that way, they'll suddenly dive into the plant understory, and you will never find them. BTW, that's from my earliet collecting days before I learned to study the life history and habits of a bug to figure out an easy way to catch it.

Did you get to see the dorsal side of its wings before it departed?

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but its still not better than a bug in hand. Even so, the mostly bright yellow ventral hindwing in your picture does fit for an early summer brood, but it also has color and markings resembling a summer female to me (so does the pupal picture). Could be the clines in the SE are different than in the SW too though. While I've come across this bug in many places (not in your state but fairly close in FL for example), all the ones I collected or reared over the years were from either UT or along the AZ/MX border. So I've never worked directly with this bug from the SE beyond just noting its presence, and have to base on the SW colonies.

Regardless, all just food for thought. You have a lot of earned knowledge about the leps in your area, so your instincts should be pretty good.

Sandy

Sherry, as I've said before I often trust instinct, a product of so many years doing the leps. Doesn't mean I'm right though by any means. It's one of those bird in hand things to be absolutely sure.
Our Eurema lisa is nominate (E. l. lisa). The males and females are both yellow (the females are a little lighter/clearer yellow overall), but this species also throws pure white albinic females in common with some of the other Coliadinae species. While I can't say that I've collected females of this particular species that are an obvious intergrade between yellow/white, I have of other Coliadinae species so I'm sure it occurs.

Another tidbit that might be of interest. In the SW areas where they both occur, the only way to accurately distinguish E. lisa from E. nise on the wing is by their flight patterns because they are so very similar in size/color/markings. A trick I learned... while both species will patrol borders of scrubby habitats, E. lisa is an open space denizen that usually can't even be frightened into the scrubby areas whereas E. nise dives into that cover for protection if frightened instead of flushing to the open areas.
L.

BTW, don't forget to keep July 25th at Lover's Point marked on your calendar.

Edna

Sherry,
Another nice picture. Here in the west Nathalis iole can be very common in some localized places, very rare in others and totally missing in yet others with little rhyme or reason as to why. Has nothing to do with habitat... they can be found along agricultural crop land borders, in low desert scrub, high plateau desert, riparian to even subalpine habitats. I've reared them from all of these different habitats over the years. Easiest place to find them around here is not on the desert, but rather in a particular mountain meadow at about 8,000' in the Spring Mountains where they are like flies in a garbage dump some years and nowhere to be found others. That's probably normally because most northern areas are repopulated by migrations and have no year-round resident populations. But I'm not convinced we don't have year-round residents here (was trying to prove that when the health ended my doing field work). Fun little bug that seldom flies more than a couple of inches above the ground.
Larry

Sandy

Here's a shot of a Sleepy Orange ready to eclose that I took this morning.