Viceroy

Description:

The viceroy butterfly is dark orange with black veins. A row of white spots edge its wings. Its color and pattern mimics the monarch butterfly's pattern except for a black horizontal stripe that crosses the bottom of its back wings. The viceroy caterpillar is white and olive-brown.

Habitat:

Habitat: Moist open or shrubby areas such as lake and swamp edges, willow thickets, valley bottoms, wet meadows, and roadsides. This one was found next to a sand pit. Range: Northwest Territories south along the eastern edges of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountains to central Mexico, east through all the eastern United States.

Notes:

An innocuous species gaining protection by mimicking a harmful or distasteful species, is known as Batesian mimicry.