I was sure this butterfly would never be identified. Of many duskywing shots in my file, I think they're all Funereal. Any way I can easily tell these from Mournful, which are supposed to be common in my area, though I've never seen one?

I identified this months ago and could well be wrong. How can I move it to ID Request? (Tag and drop?) Looking again, it seems more likely Mournful Duskywing, and there's a lot of oak in the area.

I go back to my original ID of Funereal, but am not sure enough to put it there. Funereal is the more common; in fact, I haven't found local photos or drawings of Mournful. Orsak's book "The Butterflies of Orange County, California" says dissection is the only way to be sure. (As Chuck pointed out, there are several dustywings around here. The other two, which look different than mine, are Propertius and Afranius.)

Rudi Mattoni's Butterflies of Greater Los Angeles is the online version of a poster/field guide I bought at a Native Plant Society sale some time ago. Unfortunately the images were taken from pinned specimens and are a bit too duskywinged to make out some of the ID marks.

In case you're wondering: "Greater Los Angeles" as used there includes most of Orange County (not to mention parts of Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties).

I have a couple nearly identical lists of butterflies for the county, with perhaps five differences. Also very helpful here - maybe in Greater L.A. too - is a recently updated website run by Peter Bryant of UCI. Link is:

http://mamba.bio.uci.edu/~pjbryant/biodiv/bflyplnt.htm

I'm amazed at how much easier it is to see differences in online photos, as opposed to the tiny images in so many books. As a former marcom guy, I know printing is often way off in color.