Butterfly Crazy!

I knew it was going to be a good butterfly day when I couldn't get a dang thing done at the drawing/writing table. 

I kept seeing swallowtails. 

Eastern tiger swallowtail on crocosmia

This was interesting to me because I couldn't remember having seen swallowtails fighting over the crocosmia my friend Bonnie gave me years ago. I was astounded when she told me I wouldn't have to pull the bulbs over the winter, that it was hardy right in the ground. I had to believe her because she's from Erie PA and it's a LOT colder up there than it is here in southeast Ohio. 

I planted them and they sat and thought about it for a year and then decided they liked Ohio and took off running all over my hummingbird bed.

I've seen crocosmia just like this growing naturalized on roadside banks in Costa Rica. I wrote that sentence before I Googled "Crocosmia native to" and found out it's native to grasslands in southern and eastern Africa! Zowie! 

Had a feeling it wasn't native to Costa Rica. Kind of amazing that something from East Africa overwinters in Erie PA, huh? Amazing and a wee bit scary.

The hummingbirds love it, as do the spicebush (left) and tiger swallowtails. And so do I. I love anything that multiplies enough so I can give some to friends, but not so much that I have to pull the plug and go all zero-tolerance on it. Like lavatera and loosestrife. Got some crocosmia earmarked for Shila's newly revived and humming front garden. Paying it forward--for me that's what gardening's all about. I've got enough cardinal flower seedlings that I can give some to Shila, too!

Pipevine swallowtail says YEAH! 

I went to the kitchen to fix a little something to eat right after taking these shots through my studio window and stared slack-jawed as a very large brilliant lemon-yellow butterfly fluttered at Pelargonium "Happy Thought Red."  Duh? Whazzat??

It took about 20 seconds to sink in on me that I was looking at a giant cloudless sulfur! 

From there, it went to the Million Bells petunia (GCSU's love pink!)

and then zooped right over to the Naked Ladies which you may remember I dug up down on Dean's Fork and brought home in a paper cup because I wanted to know what kind of bulb made those funny straplike leaves in early spring. You can see that they, too, like living here. Who wouldn't? Heapin' helpin's of cow manure!

For a hoot, see "Digging the Mystery Daffodil," from March 2015. It tells the story of finding the mystery leaves, digging the bulbs, and figuring out what they were. 

The sulfur muscled its way into this flower and I was astonished to see it shoulder another giant cloudless sulfur out of the same blossom! I should stop here to say that giant cloudless sulfurs are a bit of an event in Whipple, Ohio. They are a southern species that makes a reverse migration in the late summer, flying far north of their breeding range for reasons unknown. Fun? Profit? 

For a dizzy and probably unrepeatable moment, I had two GCSU's in the same frame, on the Naked Ladies I'd dug, not knowing what they even were, years ago, who were now doing their spectacular thing in my heirloom bed. Hm. That sounds a little odd, but I'm too lazy to rewrite it. I kind of like the way it came out anyway. Heh. It's a terrible sentence, but this is a blog, not a book. 

LOOKIT THAT!!!!! The green leaves behind? Dean's Fork peony!!


I love this shot of a GCSU rising straight up, its abdomen above its hard-beating wings. It must need to get that little bod out of the way of the rotating wings when it's helicoptering straight up.

On the next stalk, that same tattered pipevine swallowtail I shot on the cardinal flower was having its way with the ladies. 

And peeking down beneath, I found a Peck's skipper sipping nectar from between the petals. Too small to go into the flower for nectar like the big boys, it still makes its way and finds sweetness.

I came back in the house and Jemima paid me a visit through the studio window.  She likes to check up on me.

I can't even tell you how I love this bird, love that she still visits her ma and takes handouts of pecans and chicken breast, rice and sweet corn, sunflower hearts and peanuts from her window feeder.

As of July 31, she was easy to tell from the other four jays in the yard by her molty wings; she'd lost her big white-tipped tertials and was still growing replacements. The two deck feathers of her tail were about 3/4 grown in, too.  She changes every day, and she looks so different now (August 6)! I worry that I won't be able to pick her out from the other jays very soon, when her first alternate plumage is finally in.

I had a feeling, based on what I was seeing in the yard, that the Monarch Meadow would be hoppin', so I betook myself out there to meet Shila, who drove out after work to shoot butterflies with me. 

We were not disappointed. Another late summer/autumn reverse migrant from the Deep South is the giant swallowtail, sometimes called the Orange Dog for its depredations on orange trees. The broodplant for GISW is citrus! Since my Ruby Red grapefruit "tree" croaked, not much of that is growing in Appalachian Ohio. So these big boys have to come from afar.

Giants are just beeeyoootiful. I love the underwing!!

Can you believe this is the same bug?? Yep. Upperwing, with that fabulous stripe of gold across the middle.

Really it's hard to believe it's the same butterfly. Like giant cloudless sulfurs, giant swallowtails like pink.

This summer has been so very beautiful. Cool and rainy, lush and green. There's not a blade of grass wanting for water anywhere. I haven't had to water since June. Divine!! And all these butterflies, coming out just when I need them most, in the most perfect milkweed monarch meadow on the planet.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Following the Butterfly

The first pipevine swallowtail shows up on the cardinal flower, 7/31/12.

Meanwhile, back in my yard, the fun never stops. Blogging is like following the butterfly. And I think that that's part of its appeal. You want to see what happens next, however random. Well, rest assured it's still all happening in my backyard zoo. The action wasn't limited to one July afternoon! The challenge is winnowing out all the good stuff, editing it, cropping it, getting it ready, finding time to whip it into shape for presentation. The greater challenge is fitting in all the stuff you really MUST blog about to fulfill obligations, while the durn redstarts and swallowtails are flittering just outside your window. South African birding or backyard? Ack! Can't choose! So....Both!

Some like it shallow, like this little peachstart (what Bill calls young male redstarts).

Bluebird dad is looking mighty worn, too, like his little brown mate in a previous post. He's ready for a molt, but he's got two boys and a girl about to fledge (8/7) in the front yard box. Then he'll finish feeding them for another three weeks, and only then will he drop into the Barco-lounger and have hisself a well-earned beer and a good molt. Three broods this season, whew! How's he going to pay for all that college?

You had to mention college. You mean I have to take them all around to look at schools this fall?

Yes. In a flock. Show them the Spicebush School down by the creek. And don't forget Sumac U. It's right out the meadow; they could live at home and commute.

The rare spurred cardinal. Not sure how both these little underwing coverts got symmetrically turned out, but you can be sure I'll be watching for this girl to see if this aberration persists over days or even months. In my experience, a bird can show a turned feather for quite some time, often until it's molted out. I like this! She is workin' those spurs!

A young ruby-throat, annoyed by leaves in front of his Salvia guarantica "Black and Blue," takes matters into his own tiny claws and clings to the leaf while feeding. Oh, I love moments like this. Innovation comes from the young of mind.

For to those who've suggested a supertyduper webcam for Indigo Hill to capture moments like these...well, it's still a distant dream, because we are as yet in the grasp of the cruel Overlord known as Hughes.Net which, having a monopoly as the only Interwebs provider in much of rural Washington County, feels free to charge us nearly $100 a month for our Internet, yet limits us to 475 MB per day in downloads. It's slow and spotty, the stuff of weekly cranky calls from the Peasants to our Overlord to complain. "Dave" in Mumbai always ends our calls by asking me if there's anything more he can do for me. Oh, the temptation...

Frinstance, I've had to go back five times and re-upload the photos for this post alone when the connection was broken. I can only listen to Spotify for a blissful two hours a day, and if anybody watches videos (if they have the patience to wait for them to load) it sends us over the brink immediately. No software downloads possible, no updates...they all eat our bandwidth. And then when you cross the Megabyte Bridge of Doom, having stolen the Troll's Gold by downloading more than 475 MB of material in 24 hours, the Web is down for another 24 hours until you  tithe $11.00 to the Overlord. On top of the $93 he's already taking out of you every month for the awesome Interwebs service described above. You can tell it's down because it goes from Slow to Slowest.

Get the picture?

If it sounds medieval, it is. It's better than dialup, I'll give it that.

Soooo...nice idea, but ain't no way we have the Webpower to support a birdcam. You'll have to settle for still photos until a magic leprechaun comes throwing gold coins and gives us Peasants some real broadband that we can afford. We can't even afford the lousy service we do get. 

Oh my. Did I just rant? I seem to...I am sorry. This is a happy shiny place full of bathing birds and clinging hummingbirds. They slip out, those Rants.  Usually when Art rams its head against Technology, or lack thereof. Hughes.Net is boasting about its new satellite (Wow! It looks so high-tech! So many doo-dads on it!) that it claims will be orbiting Ohio as of this fall, giving us all the exact thing we want. Which would be decent, fast Internet service.  Maybe they'll let us download 500 MB/day then, and charge us $150 a month. To pay for the new satellite, you know.

Oops, I did it again.

Oh look! Stackup at the Spa!

I'm done now, I really am. Except that I have to tell you about the 71st species to bathe in the Spa. Next time.

Muddlety's Butterflies

We had very little butterfly weather in West Virginia. Butterfly weather is warm and sunny. When it rains and is cool and misty, butterflies hide away. When the sun peeks out, so do they--it's like magic, like suddenly walking into the movie "Snow White," with butterflies parting in front of you.

I managed to snap a few butterflies in the hour or so of sunshine we enjoyed. Pipevine swallowtails were the most obvious about.
They're distinguished by that bewitching iridescent teal-blue hindwing. Beyond that, the iridescence suffuses the forewing and body. The pipevine swallowtail is one elegant bug.

So we're watching these butterflies puddling (imbibing phosphates and other essential minerals in mud), and this thing that looks like a flying crawfish shows up.
Eek! It's walking on the pipevine! What is it?

Ah. It's a Nessus Sphinx, a kind of hawkmoth, Amphion floridensis. Its brood plant (what the caterpillars eat) is Virginia creeper, grape, or porcelainberry. Lovely.

And exceedingly weird. Here, its forewings are blurred and nearly invisible, enhancing the crawfish similarity.


Not only that, but there's a little bitty microlep, another moth that looks like a miniature. See it just to the left of the giant sphinx? With a dandelion seed for scale? Teeny. Maybe somebody will know what it is, but I'm not holding my breath. All I know about it is: it likes skunkdoo.

On to more wholesome things. Here's Swamp Blue Violet, Viola cucullata. I like the common name of cuckoopint.
A Juvenal's duskywing, dark harbinger of spring. You can tell it from Horace's by the two pale dots on the upper rim of the hindwing.

And for me, the prize of the day (other than spending part of it with Tim Ryan) was a lovely West Virginia White. How appropriate for this rarish little butterfly to show up, nectaring on foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia, at the end of our Muddlety trip.


This lovely little thing is distinguished by its grayish shading on the veins of the underwing. It's a Pieris, like the cabbage white P. rapae, but it's P. virginiensis.

Ahhh. What a nice find.