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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the July 12, 2009 Newsletter, issued from the Siskiyou Mountains west of Grants Pass, Oregon:
CALIFORNIA SISTER
Because of its bold markings, large size and lack of similar local species, the California Sister, ADELPHA BREDOWII, probably is the easiest-to-identify of our butterflies, as well as one of the most common. You can see one on a Forest Service picnic table above.
One reason California Sisters are so common here is that the species' preferred host plant also is common, the Canyon Live Oak.
We've run into "sister butterflies" before, all with those orange blotches on the inside forewings and smaller white spots or lines across both wings, causing the wings' openings and closings to look like a mouth opening and closing, which might be unnerving to a predator. If you savor Nature's "variations on a theme" you might enjoy comparing our California Sister with the Donysa Sister we saw a couple of years ago in the oak-pine-sweetgum highlands of Chiapas at http://www.backyardnature.net/chiapas/butt-024.jpg.
Later, in the Yucatan's hot, scrubby lowlands, we kept running into Massilia Sisters like the one shown at http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/sister-b.jpg.
In fact, 33 sister butterflies -- species of the genus Adelpha -- are listed for Mexico, though the Audubon field guide mentions only two for North America. The California Sister is distributed from Washington State to Mexico's Baja California, east into Colorado and New Mexico.
The Audubon guide says the group is referred to as "sisters" because its colors are reminiscent of those of a nun's habit. I've not seen nuns wearing orange, white and black habits, but there's a lot I haven't seen.
