As It Grows Colder, Butterfly Thoughts

I've been pondering butterflies recently, and not solely because I made a wall of them for the science store either. It was a really good summer for them, especially if you had a couple of thriving butterfly bushes to draw them in, like... well, like butterflies to a butterfly bush, more or less.

In any event, here are a couple of the photos that I took at the time of some of our insect visitors. If you've never tried, butterflies are swine to photograph, and it's a good thing that I now have the really good digital camera, as otherwise I would have been very annoyed to have paid to have this film developed. You're just seeing the cream of the crop: the other twenty-odd images include weird angles, missed focus, and inexplicable angles which highlight the attractiveness of the ground.

The two pictures that follow are from 15 August 2008, at a little after 4pm, according to iPhoto. I've tried to make identifications based on the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies, but if anyone out there has specialist knowledge, let me know, as I'm very much a novice when it comes to insects. That being said...

First, we have the male tiger swallowtail (pterourus glaucus):

And, secondly, what I think is a female tiger swallowtail:

As we move into our yearly hibernation, and there's a threat of slushy rainy goodness in the forecast, it's comforting to think about the summer that will come again, as it always does.