Wish Miss Sherry would be here to help you out. Did you look at checkerspots?

Thanks, Iris -- I just scrolled through a ton of checkerspots images but couldn't find one that was close enough.

This butterfly is pretty much orange on top (a bit darker orange than appears in the pics), and it's really cool that the wing undersides are light brown, gray and white. I'll try to focus on that row of black dots with the light blue centers.

Bingo!!! Tawny Emperor...yes?

Oh, what absolute fun to find something in my yard I've never seen before nor ever heard of!

Yay, congratulations! I looked at the picture of it in my quick guide, but I didn’t see the nice outline on the bottom , so I didn’t suggest that. Have a Hackberry around?

Oh, boy, do we ever -- unfortunately! One of our backyard neighbors we share a fence with let a bunch of volunteer hackberry seedlings go completely unchecked. We now have a veritable grove growing along the fence line, crammed amongst three huge crape myrtles also planted right next to the fence.

I hate it come autumn, as the hackberries are just flocked with woolly aphids, falling and flying everywhere. And their constant showers of honeydew turn everything beneath (AKA our yard!) into a black, sooty mold mess. Blecch.