Fiery Skipper?

Skipper butterfy, possibly a Fiery Skipper, Hylephila phyleus and unknown wasp coming in for a landing on Foxglove, Balboa Park. Fiery skipper was my best guess on this little skipper butterfly; however, this one has a brown body (female perhaps?). Butterflies can be a bit of work to identify but I'm not even going attempt to ID that wasp. Ahem, ID left as an exercise to our readers!

Foxglove (Digitalis) is poisonous but very beautiful and showy with long spikes of tubular flowers. It is also clearly not poisonous for pollinators!

Natural Beauty: a Passing Red and Black Butterfly

Red and Black butterfly pausing on a leaf...

Eye Spot

Eye spot on the wing of a butterfly! Ever notice the tiny, reflective scales that make up a butterfly wing? These are arranged to look like a large eye to scare off hungry birds.

Butterfly on Verbena

Butterfly on verbena. Found a whole bunch of butterflies flying around the flowers at the nursery. Here's one of them posing on verbena.

Butterfly on Sunflower

Butterfly on Sunflower. Sorry for the quick posts. I've been studying like crazy to keep up this Semester. Two more years of this... Hope you enjoy the picture!
-WH

Passing Passiflora Butterfly

Gulf Fritillary Butterfly, the front yard... Normally butterflies don't land a whole lot but if you follow them with the lens long enough (argh) they will eventually land. This one landed twice on the jade plant before getting back up to my Passion Fruit vine, likely looking for a spot to lay a few eggs. They are also called Passiflora butterflies.

Yesterday, a big brown dragonfly, wings glittering in the sun landed on one of the tomato hoops/wires. He was 2-3 feet away from me. He looked a me. I looked at him. It was really cool. He almost seemed to have a smile as he stared at me. Creepy? Or really cool? I tend to look at it as the latter.

I've very seldom if ever seen a dragon land right next to me while I was moving. This one seemed more curious than not. Not to mention that I live pretty far from water and in a semi-arid area (cactus like it here). I wonder where he came from? Do you suppose I've got dragonfly larvae in my little lilly oak barrel?

I totally could have snapped an awesome picture...but I didn't have my camera with me. Argh. #$%*! Rule number one. The camera follows you everywhere! Rule number two. If you don't have your camera, go back to rule #1. You leave the camera in the house, you miss the picture. That's the breaks, eh? So you get gulf fritillary instead of really cool, awesome, carnivorous looking dragonfly! [Chuckles to self]. Happy Sunday all.

Butterfly Mania

Sometimes butterflies land in the strangest places! This little girl doesn't seem to know quite what to do with the butterfly perched on her head and she and her mom look to little brother to nudge the butterfly off of it's resting place (her head...). Little brother came to the rescue shortly afterwards.

Large Orange Sulphur Butterfly

I suspect that this is a Large Orange Sulphur Butterfly, Phoebis agarithe. They were flitting around in profusion on the wet side of Oahu but almost never landed anywhere where I could get a good snapshot of them. I finally found one that was willing to stay still long enough to get a photo outside the Honolulu Zoo, half an island away. As opposed to their name, these butterflies are a wonderful lemon yellow. Of course, I might have misidentified them as well.

Photo-Foiled or Not?

I saw a little white butterfly at the beach the other day. I was trying to sneak in close to snap a picture or two without falling off of my rollerblades when the neighboring cat also sees the very same butterfly. The cat comes bounding over as I'm desparately trying to get my picture (before he eats the little thing). Needless to say, the cat got to the butterfly before I did and the butterfly was none too successful at flying off. Actually, it ended up a bit of a tattered mess. I, being the perpetually adaptive thing that I am, ended up taking pictures of the cat chasing the butterfly instead. Be glad you're not a butterfly. Be very glad.