Question Mark Butterfly

About the Question Mark Butterfly

The Question Mark is the butterfly with punctuation: a tiny silver "?" stamped on the underside of the hindwing gives it both its name and its identity. Wings open, it is a rich orange-and-black nymphalid with hooked wingtips; wings closed, it becomes a dead leaf so convincing that the silver mark is often the only thing that gives it away.

Like its cousin the Goatweed Leafwing, this is a butterfly of sap runs and rotting fruit rather than flower beds -- a woodland edge species whose caterpillars feed on hackberry and elm, two trees Central Texas has in nearly infinite supply. Adults hibernate through winter and fly on warm days in any month, and part of the population migrates south each fall in a quiet, largely unnoticed movement.

This one was photographed on July 8, 2023 along a wooded edge in eastern Travis County, perched with the leaf-side out and the question mark reading loud and clear.

The underside IS the shot -- get the silver punctuation sharp against that dead-leaf camouflage and the photograph explains the species' entire name and survival strategy in one frame.