Great Southern White

About the Great Southern White

The Great Southern White is the big white butterfly of the Texas coast, and it hides its best field mark in plain sight: the clubs of its antennae are a startling turquoise-blue, like the butterfly dipped them in paint. No other white butterfly on the coast shows anything like it.

Males are clean white with charcoal zigzag edging on the forewing; females run smokier, some nearly gray. They fly with steady purpose along dunes, salt flats, and beachfront gardens, rarely far from the Gulf.

The species is famous for mass movements. In good years, Great Southern Whites stage huge one-directional flights along the coast, thousands upon thousands streaming past for days - not a true round-trip migration, but a population overflowing its habitat and spilling up the shoreline.

Caterpillars feed on coastal mustards, sea rocket, and cultivated cabbage relatives, so the butterfly prospers in beach towns as readily as wild flats. On a July day at South Padre it can be the most abundant butterfly in sight - check those antennae and the ID is settled.