Fun with butterflies!

As promised I have been spending a fair amount of time this spring looking for butterflies. I've found its a lot more productive if you concentrate on either birds or butterflies on a particular outing and not both. If you pay attention to birds you barely even see butterflies and vice versa, there is just a wider gap in search images, scanning techniques etc. than I would have imagined. Of course you can still listen for birds while butterflying :) Anyway I've had a lot of fun with it, particularly the whole "larval food plant" aspect of butterflies, and also the relative ease of photography (at least compared with birds). Its been a very rainy spring here in Stillwater, which has really put a damper on looking for butterflies in the last few weeks, but here are some images of butterflies that I have taken so far this spring. So far I have only seen 20 species or so, but I hope to expand that exponentially as the summer progresses here in Stillwater and also when I eventually head to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of TX, later this year.

Red Admiral

Painted Lady

Monarch

Eastern Tiger-swallowtail

Eastern Tailed-blue

Red-banded Hairstreak

Red-banded Hairstreak