Christie,

Beautiful shots of a Common Wood-Nymph, Cercyonis pegala. Even though it's called a Wood-Nymph, it's found on prairies and grasslands, and woodland edges. Host plants are grasses. We see a lot on the Tall Grass Prairie.

Sandy

Beautiful!
Sherry

Nice

Fantastic pictures that belong in a picture book. And your pictures show how variable this species can be even within a population as well as between sexes.

These are probably Cerecyonis pegala texana, which are one of the prettiest (IMO) and largest ssp of C. pegala. If I had to determin just from the pictures, a couple of keys I can see strongly suggest to me that the top picture is a female and the bottom a male.
Thanks for sharing.
Larry

Thanks!
I didn't notice that the spots were different when I was photographing them. I only noticed it when I was looking at the enlarged photos on my computer. Some of the photos I looked at on the web don't have the creamy yellow patch behind the eyespots. It's interesting that they're variable.

This butterfly will also come to nectar on fruit.

One of their larval hosts is Tridens flava, or Purpletop grass. I would LOVE to see one of these beauties, but not too likely in my urban garden.

Thanks for sharing these beauties with us, Christie! One we rarely see posted here.

Susan

Lovely pictures!

Christie,
The subterminal/postmedian "creamy yellow" band is a subspecies/form thing. Only 3 or 4 of the dozen and a half or so recognized subspecies/forms of this bug have the brighter wide band. Another example of how leps only determined to species level with field guides can be very confusing for folks as they are learning about lepidoptera.
L.

Thank you Ladobe! I'm glad we have the type with yellow band. They much prettier than the photos shown on the butterfliesandmoths.org site.

Susan - I looked around for purple top grass. I don't think we have that so there must be another grass they're using here. Wish I could find some cats so I would know what it is. They're one of my most common butterflies this year.