Featherless Fliers

Butterflies, naturally.  It's high summer.  Hot, humid and here it's really dry. Thankfully, our perennial wildflowers are surviving without watering.  They are attracting some regular visitors.  Here are a few.

This is a Pearly Crescentspot.  I love the little emerald mark on the top of the thorax.

It's a strong flier and aggressive towards other Crescentspots.  It did not stay long in one place, so getting just one image was a challenge.

I'll make a brief sidetrack from butterflies to dragonflies. I saw this Widow Skimmer making several threatening attacks on smaller butterflies like the above Pearly Crescentspot.

They are a hunter, but I'd not considered butterflies on their list. 

Another nervous butterfly was this Baltimore feeding on a stalk of Yarrow.

One of our most successful plants for attracting butterflies is the Echinacea prupurea, or Purple Coneflower.  The Painted Lady, Vanessa cardui, is a frequent visitor.

There are a large number of butterflies in the Skipper family, Hesperiidea.  I failed to conclusively name this one.  Similarly, I mostly failed to follow their erratic flight or focus on most before they moved again.  I got one clear image on a bellflower.

  And, I got one that confronted me on a tiny Coneflower. 

These are all beautiful and engaging, but just about the most anticipated butterfly to our garden is any of the various Swallowtails - big, colorful and strong fliers. This one fed voraciously for so long, that I had over 125 images to select from. Here is the amazing Tiger Swallowtail feeding on the native Monarda fistulosa  in our garden.

This one has been around for a while because it has lost it signature tails.

I love watching how these butterflies twist and turn, sometimes fluttering to reach each nectar tube.

Since I prepared this blog, I spotted another rare visitor to a Coneflower. Fortunately, my camera was setup and waiting for the unexpected.  What could top a Tiger Swallowtail?  The answer is:

Eastern Black Swallowtail !

These swallowtails are really skittish.  I was 8 feet distant, and moved foot closer and the butterfly leaped into flight, circled once and left the property.  Lesson learned.

I'd like to have added a Monarch to this, but they have been impossible to capture before they take off on a long distance flight. It will soon be time for them to be laying eggs on milkweed.  Maybe then.

Paul