Elusive Viceroy #WordlessWednesday

It's a scary thing.  I have not seen (close enough to identify) any monarch butterflies so far this year.  However, I finally saw (as in "I was able to make a good ID thanks to my pictures") a similar butterfly near my home in the Southern Tier of New York.

You can barely see it here in the upper left.  Darn iPhone!

Spouse and I were exercise walking on Monday in a local park and a butterfly that looked like a monarch crossed our path, on the way to some weeds.  Would it stop long enough for me to get some pictures?  It definitely wasn't a monarch; it was a little smaller than a monarch but definitely not a small butterfly.

I tried to get closer but it flitted away.  I followed it.  It alighted on a clover flower.  I just couldn't get close enough.  Here it is in the middle left.

But then it landed on grass.

And stayed put briefly. 

I approached, snapping pictures.  These pictures are still small but if I enlarge them too much, they will blur.

It's definitely a viceroy, a butterfly that mimics the coloration of monarchs.  Naturalists used to think it mimicked so it won't get eaten, but that is now being disputed.  Viceroys, like monarchs (it turns out) are toxic to many animals.  The mimicry is actually more complicated than first believed.

 You can ID from the bar lines just above the lowest black and white dotted area that run to the body.  Monarchs don't have these bars. Also, viceroys are a little smaller than monarchs.

What a sadness that monarchs, incidentally, were just put on the endangered species list.

Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for #WordlessWednesday.