Another of my beloved creatures: the butterfly, receives star treatment each year in many cities with a viewing tent. Our beautiful museum does one and it was a great pleasure to view them. I felt as light as they as I circled the tent, watching them flutter about, oblivious to the delighted families.
A monarch, the king of butterflies on the West Coast. How sad it makes me to think of their decimated habitats and declining populations.
In Pacific Grove their tree habitat was radically pruned, due to the city's concerns with liability due to falling tree limbs.
In Mexico, the over-wintering destination for these migrating butterflies, decline was 59%. This was due to loss of milkweed plants in the United States; farmers are planting more due to profitability factors, and planting genetically modified crops that are herbicide-resistant, killing milkweeds which grew between rows. Severe heat and weather were also a factor.
Red Admiral, a common butterfly; the mature butterfly sips from buddleia. It overwinters in southern Texas.
Spicebush swallowtails - what a beautiful, quite large (3 1/2 inches) butterfly - an edibe mimic of the poisonous pipevine swallowtail.
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| swallowtail larvae |
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Zebra-wing (not my own photo, although the others are.) This butterfly never stopped fluttering, although all the others were sitting on the ground, rather fixed in position. |
Fritillary (?)
Queen Butterfly
Not sure what "no comments" means. That they won't be posted? In any case, thanks for this wonderful blog. I loved the photos and the info about these gorgeous creatures.
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