These are tiny moths – less than half an inch long – that I found on the driveway. They were with large fluttering groups of butterflies, all sucking up the salt and minerals left from evaporating rainwater, dead animals and animal scat. Usually the moths or butterflies doing this are males, and the salts are used in mating.
Here’s a picture of the Spotted Thyris with some of the butterflies.
The Spotted Thyris moths are so small that at first I didn’t realize what they were. The looked like tiny crumpled butterflies.
Here’s another photo from 6/26/2006