Posts in Category: butterfly
Gulf Fritillary
Gulf Fritillary, Big Cypress National Preserve
There were, as I have said before, not a lot of butterflies in December in the Everglades, so I made the most of the few we did see. The Gulf Fritillary was the second most common sighting, after the abundant Zebra Longwings. This specimen is just a bit worn, but still bright enough to capture they eye and the imagination.
Sony HX400V at just into the Clear Image Zoom range beyond 1200mm equivalent field of view (for the slightly closer focus). Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Great Southern White
Great Southern White: Eco Pond, Falmingo, Everglades National Park
We saw Gulf Fritterlaries and Zebra Longwings (butterflies) pretty much everywhere in the Everglades, but we only saw the Great Southern White at the far south end, out toward the Flamingo Campground along the Eco Pond trail…and there we saw hundreds of them. I tried hard to make this a Florida White, but I am pretty sure it is just a Great Southern. Florida White is more common in the shade and more restricted in habitat…to the point of being endangered. The Great Southern is by far the more common of the two. In my brief research this morning I could find no information that would give me confidence in distinguishing the two, so GSW is the default id here. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 1300mm equivalent field of view (just into Clear Image Zoom for the slightly closer focus). 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Everglades Zebra Heliconian
Zebra Longwing (Heliconian). Flamingo area, Everglades NP
We did not have a huge number of butterflies the second week in December in south Florida. The temperatures were unseasonably cool, for the area, and most butterflies, even if active in December, were tucked in tight somewhere keeping warm. The exception was the Zebra Longwing (or Heliconian). They were pretty much everywhere we went and flying by mid-morning. Maybe “fluttering” would be more accurate with this bug, as their flight is about as floppy and hesitant as a butterfly gets. I chased a few down when we saw them for photos. This one is on the Coastal Prairie / Bay Shore Loop Trail just at the far edge of the Flamingo campground, about as far south in the Park as you can get. I like the background here (it has, as they say, good bokeh), and I like the exposure, which preserves the saturation in the yellow bands…too often a picture of this bug will show white bands due to the contrast between the black and yellow and the difficulty of exposing for both.
Sony HX400V at just over 1200mm equivalent field of view. Going just slightly into the Clear Image Zoom (digital) zoom range decreases the minimum focus to something in the 6 foot range and gives the best tel-macro effect on the Sony. 1/640th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Mangrove Skipper
Mangrove Skipper: Key West Botanical Garden
We had already pretty well done the Everglades for this trip, so yesterday we took a Sunday drive down the Keys. My first visit there, and I was certainly impressed by the scenery. Birds…not so much. It was a slow day for birds. Mid-December is evidently not high season on the Keys. Still, we looked, without success, for Key Deer, and we spent a pleasant few hours chasing passerines, dragonflies, and butterflies at the Key West Botanical Garden. This is my life Mangrove Skipper…a great bug at any time and on any day, thank you very much!
Sony HX400V at 1150mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 800 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Giant Swallowtail
Giant Swallowtail
The Giant Swallowtail is among the more spectacular bugs in North America, on size alone…but the coloring is not to shabby either…especially if you consider both upper and under views. In my experience it is hard to photograph as it is continuously nectaring, hovering in front of flowers with wings quivering rapidly. And then, of course, the contrast between the black uperside and the yellow bands can turn those bands white if you don’t hit the exposure just right. It is definitely worth the effort. These are my most successful Giant Swallowtail images to date. I include both top and bottom views here…which is the only way to do the bug justice 🙂
Estero Llano Grande State Park World Birding Center, Weslaco TX. Sony HX400V. 370mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 250 and 100 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic Pro on my Windows tablet.
Heliconians: National Butterfly Center
Haliconians. Zebra and Julia
Longwings (Haliconians) are among my favorite Rio Grande Valley butterflies. They are, to me, the very definition of exotic. Graceful, slow fliers, they often nectar with wings fully spread so they are ideal photographic subjects, and there is nowhere better to photograph them than the National Butterfly Center in Mission TX. I always attempt to spend at least a morning at the NBC on every trip to the Rio Grande Valley. Here we have the Zebra, one of the first butterflies to great me at the NBC gardens proper, and Julia, which another visiting couple pointed me to later in the morning.
Sony HX400V at various focal lengths. Processed and cropped in Lightroom on my Windows tablet. Assembled in Phototastic.
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Comma Butterfly
The Comma and the Question Mark are relatively large Bushfoot Butterflies. They are both found in New England but I rarely see either. They look enough alike so I always have to consult the guide when I do. Their distinguishing mark, and the mark that gives them their names, is a tiny squiggle on the underwing, which looks slightly more like a comma in one and slightly more like a question mark in the other. You really need the bug in hand to use that, so I go by the extra dot on the upper forewing on the Comma. This specimen is from my final walk (for this trip) around the trails behind the Hawk Watch at Cape May Point Lighthouse State Park in Cape May New Jersey.
Sony HX400V at 2400mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 250 @ f6.3. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Painted Lady Backside
Common Buckeye in an uncommon pose.
A birding couple I met on the beach on Saturday told me about Timber Point and Timber Island trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. They were up for the day from Massachusetts, chasing eBird reports of birds of interest. I live practically next door to Rachel Carson Headquarters, and I had never heard of Timberpoint or Timber Island. A little research turned up the facts. It is a new trail and a new property for the NWR system, acquired after a locally organized fund-raising drive that covered the $2 million plus purchase price. It is a point of rocky upland and mixed forest extending out along the ocean side of the Little River across from Goose Rocks Beach and south of Fortunes Rocks. At low tide you can walk out to Timber Island. Local volunteers, along with the Civilian and Youth Construction Corps, built trails and boardwalks as needed and one raised deck overlook, and installed a Tide Clock near the head of the passage to the Island. It is altogether a wonderful spot and one that I will add to my regular round of photoprowls. It was dead high tide when I was there yesterday of course, but I plan to get back there the first sunny day we have at low tide.
There were lots of the typical birds of the Maine fall: Yellow-rumped Warblers, White-crowned Sparrow, Song Sparrows, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Brown Tree-creeper, Rufus-sided Towhee, Blue Jays, etc…as well as hundreds of chipmunks busy gathering acorns…and 5 species of butterfly: Cabbage White, Clouded Sulphur, Red Admiral, Painted Lady (pictured here in an uncommon pose), and Monarch. I will post an extended Photoprowls piece later today.
I like this backlighted pose of the Lady…which is good since every effort to get on the sun side of the bug lead to its moving deeper into the brush off the trail.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 320 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Painted Lady visits Maine
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I remember standing on a soccer field in Rehoboth New Mexico and watching hundreds, probably thousands, of Painted Lady butterflies cross the an imaginary line drawn across the field. They were on their way from Mexico to repopulate North America, wave on wave. They do it every year. While the American Lady butterfly is fairly common in Maine, Painted Ladies only occasionally get this far north. What a treat to find one on a photoprowl down by the lower Mousam River earlier this week.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 80 @ 1/400th @ f6.3. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Cropped slightly and processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro tablet.
Ragged Swallowtail
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I spent the day on Sunday at the Wine Country Optics and Birding Fair at Cornerstone in Sonoma California. Cornerstone is Wine Country Visitor Center, in-door and out-door sculpture gallery, wine tasting venue for 4 vineyards, and collection of demonstration gardens from the area’s best know landscape gardeners and designers. It is a popular wedding destination, but on one Sunday of the year the extensive grounds are given over to the pop-up tents and tables of birding and conservation organizations and birding optics makers. I was, of course, there for ZEISS.
In the afternoon, when the sun and the air got hot, the crowds dwindled and I had a chance to wander the grounds. I sent 30 minutes chasing butterflies in a row of purple flowered shrubs. There were lots of skippers, several Monarchs, and this one lone, very worn, Western Swallowtail. The color contrast in this image is almost more than the eye can tolerate :). And the butterfly is so worn I am amazed it was still flying.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 100 @ 1/1250th @ f6.3. Program with -1/3 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.