Clouded sulphur
The clouded sulphur is a pale yellow butterfly, like a little piece of sunshine fluttering over a field. Under its back wings it has a tiny spot with a reddish ring. Some females are white instead of yellow.
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Fun facts
Big groups of these butterflies gather at mud puddles to drink.
Its eggs start pale yellow, turn red after a few days and go gray just before the caterpillar hatches.
Its green chrysalis hangs from a little silk belt. Just before the butterfly comes out, it turns yellow with a pink line like a zipper.
These butterflies travel to new places every year.
A female can tell a male of her own kind from a look-alike butterfly by his smell.
Most asked questions about Clouded sulphur
?What does a clouded sulphur eat?
The butterfly drinks flower nectar. The caterpillar eats clover, alfalfa, vetch and similar plants.
?How big is a clouded sulphur?
Its wings measure about 3 to 5 centimetres from tip to tip.
?Where can I see a clouded sulphur?
In sunny fields, lawns and roadsides across most of North America.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Colias philodice
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Pieridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Pieridae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Common sulphur
Where the facts come from
- Colias philodice (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Rhododendrites. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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