This little beauty drinks from mud puddles. And he brings his own straw

The big yellow butterflies you’re seeing now are Cloudless Sulphurs (Phoebis sennae), a familiar species in the Lowcountry and other parts of the Southeast.

Cloudless Sulphurs are common in late summer and fall, fluttering over gardens, golf courses, weedy patches, and abandoned fields, where males patrol widely in search of females.

Each butterfly first started life as a striped, greenish-yellow caterpillar feeding on the leaves of clover, partridge pea, senna, and other plants in the pea family. Then the full-grown larva metamorphosed within a delicate green or pink chrysalis bearing a remarkable resemblance to a folded leaf.

Once they’re adults, Clouded Sulphurs start foraging for nectar, which they sip via long, straw-like mouthparts. They’re especially attracted to red, purple, and orange flowers, such as pineapple sage, aster, firespike, lantana, and canna lily.

And like many other butterflies, Cloudless Sulphurs often aggregate on moist substrates such as small patches of wet sand or mud. If you look closely, you can see them uncoiling their mouthparts to suck up liquid from the ground.

This “mud-puddling” behavior seems to provide butterflies with extra nutrients normally lacking in their diet. The behavior is seen particularly in young males, which need extra sodium and nitrogen to produce the nutrient-rich spermatophores (sperm-containing capsules) they transfer to females during mating.

Some Cloudless Sulphurs may survive winter in the Lowcountry if temperatures are mild. They stay inactive most of the time, emerging to fly around briefly on warmer afternoons.

Strangely, other Cloudless Sulphurs may start drifting northward this fall — behavior that’s puzzling to scientists since the butterflies can’t survive freezing temperatures.

However, millions more will head south for the winter to southern Florida and points beyond. Like Monarchs and other migratory butterflies, they probably use the angle of the sun to keep on course. Male sulphurs may fly up to12 miles per day, but females go more slowly, conserving resources needed later for egg production.

Cloudless Sulphurs that migrate south never make the trip back to their original homes. But their descendants straggle northward in the spring, reproducing along the way and gradually re-populating the species’ breeding areas as the weather warms.

This story was originally published September 19, 2017 at 6:36 AM with the headline "This little beauty drinks from mud puddles. And he brings his own straw."