I was not scheduled to lead a field trip yesterday, and it was really my only chance to get to the National Butterfly Center and it’s butterfly gardens on this trip. The trade show at Rio Grande Birding Festival does not open until noon, so I had a few hours in the morning…three if I left the hotel at 7am to be at the NBC by the time it opens at 8am, and left there in time to be back to open the ZEISS booth. Seemed like a reasonable thing to do. 🙂

I had heard a rumor that there had been a rare butterfly sighting on Friday, and a sign in the Visitor Center confirmed a 3rd US record sighting of the Zebra Cross-wing in the gardens. I did not see the Zebra, and not for want of looking (as far as I know no one saw it on Saturday) but I did see many other beautiful bugs. This is the Great Purple Hairstreak, certainly colorful enough for anyone, and interesting in how the color is carried. It was found by a group of more avid butterflyers who decended on the garden just as I was leaving.

Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.

And for the Sunday Thought: when I arrived at the NBC at 8am on the day following a rare sighting, the staff, and the other early commers, assumed that I was chasing the Zebra Cross-wing. In fact I was not. As I told those who asked, I was just there to see what I could see and photograph. If the Zebra showed up, I would certainly enjoy it…but I was not about to make seeing or not seeing that one butterfly the test of the quality of my day. And as it turned out, that was a good thing, as I did not see the Zebra. But I had a spectacular day watching and photographing the rest of the bugs, and not a few birds, in and around the gardens.

While I was there someone received a call that a Amazon Kingfisher had been sighted about 12 miles south of Harlingen. The Amazon had only ever been recorded for the US once before. I did not even consider leaving the gardens to go look for it. Even when I got back to the Auditorium (home to the Festival), and saw other’s pictures of the Amazon, I was not seriously tempted to chase it. Rich Moncrief, my associate at the festival, eventually convinced me to go down and look…but the bird was absent while I was looking. It returned about 10 minutes after I left to go back to my duties at the booth.

And I am not at all disappointed. I might take a look tomorrow afternoon, after my morning field trip, if it is still being reported, but I might not too.

Again, I do not like to make one bird, or one bug, the measure of my day. If I had allowed myself to be disappointed, even a little, at not seeing the Amazon (or the Zebra) it would have been an insult to the Red-boardered Pixie and the Great Purple Hairstreak, and even the much more common Queens and Peacocks and skippers I photographed, to the hovering White-tailed Kite and the common Green Jays whose images I caught, and to all the other lovely bugs and birds of the morning. It would have diminished the wonder of everything I did see. And that would simply not be right.

And it would, definitely, be an insult to the giver of all these gifts! Or that’s what I think anyway.