Posing pretty, sometimes on poop

We have a saying, or rather a yelling, at the Applegate household, "Don't eat the butterflies." This mostly goes for the canines and felines, not so much the caprines (goats). So you can imagine my horror when I found the remains of a spicebush swallowtail in the basement. The mantra had gone completely unheeded and the furry perpetrators were vagrantly flaunting their rebellion. ​

However when the fuzzy killers aren't around, I can manage to get a few photos of the colorful visitors.
This year seemed to be a good year for the spicebush swallowtails in my area. I have seen them on a regular basis.

In the spring, the Eastern tiger swallowtails flocked to the rhododendron bush. I planted a butterfly bush which seemed to be a boon to several butterflies including the bright orange fritillaries. I am terrible at identifying them with the exception of the meadow fritillary which is dramatically smaller than the great spangled fritillary, Aphrodite fritillary and Atlantis fritillary. The site, www.butterfliesandmoths.org, provides a regional checklist with photos and that helps me narrow down the search, but I still lack in being able to pick out the small differences that make a different butterfly.

A few monarchs have stopped by. I plan to do another piece on them closer to  late September and October when their numbers increase in the area.  However, I am a little concerned that the recent run of dry weather will stunt wildflower growth and blossoms and leave the journeying monarchs without food. ​

Winged visitors have also included silver-spotted skippers and clearwing hummingbird sphinx moths. The hummingbird moths are always neat to watch as they hover around like their namesake.

I was also able to observe two eastern tailed blues and a Peck's skipper puddling near the neighbor's pond. Puddilng is described as a butterfly behavior where they seek out nutrients in moist substances. Those substances can include rotting plant material, mud, carrion and ... dog poop.

For the past few weeks, I had been trying to get a photo of a red-spotted purple. I was finally able to get one to land ... on a large pile of fresh dog doo. I kept hoping that it would find a nice flower or something, but it spread its tattered wings and posed pretty. So, I took the photo. 

​Then a few days past and a fresher looking red-spotted visited again, on the dog poop. This time I removed the poo, but it wouldn't pose as nicely as the tattered one did. Maybe there's a moral to this. Perhaps the tattered butterfly had seen more crap in its life than the less faded one. Maybe it was saying no matter the poop we have had to go through and what we look like in the aftermath of our crappy trials, we should just spread our tattered and faded wings and pose pretty.

Perhaps that is just the nature of things 'round here.

Story and photographs by Anna Applegate