A couple of years ago, Vanessa atalanta, the Red Admiral butterfly, was about the most common species in the neighborhood. They're a bit odd, in that they're highly migratory and don't winter over very much around here. Rather, every so often, they fly up in droves in the spring from their haunts in the Southeast and Southwest, including Texas. In those boom years, they'll spend the summer, raise a generation, and it will migrate back south. Perhaps their kids will return to our area, perhaps not. Last year was a "not," and this year looked similar. But on the stones by the millpond, I spotted one, an Admiral that looked as if it had just come through a storm. Maybe he's the vanguard of a new influx. The milkweeds have just started to bloom, and there's plenty of rotten fruit under the trees: both favorite adult foods. And the nettles are up, which is what the caterpillars like to eat. I'll need to be keeping watch to see if this "skipper" gets word back to the crew to start traveling northward.