We drove over to Henderson, KY yesterday to the "butterfly road". This is one of my favorite places to find butterflies. It is a stretch of gravel road about 2 miles long that is forested on both sides. That makes it rather shady, but the butterflies are always flying around in the gravel there.
I was hoping to see the Zebra Swallowtail....and there were several flitting up and down the road. Mike drops me off when we spot a butterfly and I start walking with him following along in the car as I progress :-) What an accomodating "driver" I have!
I think the Zebra's are so pretty and they have such long tails! I was glad that this one wanted to pose for a few minutes! Most of the time they flit by and I can't begin to chase them down.
The road is always full of little American Snout butterflies, but they are hard to get good photos of. I don't think I will ever get a better photo than the one at the top of my side bar! Most of the time they look like this....dark and very uninteresting except for the snout!
This one is showing just a touch of the colorful wing. There must be a lot of Hackberry trees in this wooded area. Both the Snouts and the Hackberry Emperor use the Hackberry as their larval tree and I see both of these butterflies here in fairly large numbers.
The Hackberry Emperor....one of the most accomodating butterflies to take photos of! They are also "friendly".....I often have them land on me while trying to take photos. Mike took a photo last year of several of them perched on me.
They sit with their wings spread open a lot making photos easy.
In fact I couldn't get a good photo of them wings closed yesterday :-) The backside of their wings are rather pretty......lots of pattern.
I spotted one Question Mark....it didn't pose very well. Shooting down at gravel isn't the best way to shoot butterflies, but they sure like to sit there.
Here you can see the mark that gives it its name. It is a type of Comma butterfly, but that extra dot after the comma mark makes it a Question Mark.
When the wings are open there is an extra mark that makes it different from the Eastern Comma. I seem to see only the Question Marks around here. They like Hackberry trees, too according to my butterfly book!
One rather poor photo of an Admiral. In total I saw 5 kinds and I think I saw some Tiger Swallowtails fly by, but they didn't stop. I also saw plenty of dragonflies and the Ebony Jewelwing damselflies are also along the creek under a bridge there, but I didn't get any photos worth posting.
We drove from here to the riverbottoms area to look for birds and I will post some tomorow. On the road as we left we saw this field of sunflowers.
A very old barn.....bet it's full of swallows!.....behind the sunflowers.
The sunflowers were all facing away from the road, but we pulled into a little parking area for some photos.
Lots of sunny heads.
I like the orderly rows.
Trying to get them facing the other way....unfortunately my car was sitting at the end!
Not quite ripe......maybe next time we see them there will be birds plucking seeds out, unless they harvest them.
Riper!
I was hoping to see the Zebra Swallowtail....and there were several flitting up and down the road. Mike drops me off when we spot a butterfly and I start walking with him following along in the car as I progress :-) What an accomodating "driver" I have!
I think the Zebra's are so pretty and they have such long tails! I was glad that this one wanted to pose for a few minutes! Most of the time they flit by and I can't begin to chase them down.
The road is always full of little American Snout butterflies, but they are hard to get good photos of. I don't think I will ever get a better photo than the one at the top of my side bar! Most of the time they look like this....dark and very uninteresting except for the snout!
This one is showing just a touch of the colorful wing. There must be a lot of Hackberry trees in this wooded area. Both the Snouts and the Hackberry Emperor use the Hackberry as their larval tree and I see both of these butterflies here in fairly large numbers.
The Hackberry Emperor....one of the most accomodating butterflies to take photos of! They are also "friendly".....I often have them land on me while trying to take photos. Mike took a photo last year of several of them perched on me.
They sit with their wings spread open a lot making photos easy.
In fact I couldn't get a good photo of them wings closed yesterday :-) The backside of their wings are rather pretty......lots of pattern.
I spotted one Question Mark....it didn't pose very well. Shooting down at gravel isn't the best way to shoot butterflies, but they sure like to sit there.
Here you can see the mark that gives it its name. It is a type of Comma butterfly, but that extra dot after the comma mark makes it a Question Mark.
When the wings are open there is an extra mark that makes it different from the Eastern Comma. I seem to see only the Question Marks around here. They like Hackberry trees, too according to my butterfly book!
One rather poor photo of an Admiral. In total I saw 5 kinds and I think I saw some Tiger Swallowtails fly by, but they didn't stop. I also saw plenty of dragonflies and the Ebony Jewelwing damselflies are also along the creek under a bridge there, but I didn't get any photos worth posting.We drove from here to the riverbottoms area to look for birds and I will post some tomorow. On the road as we left we saw this field of sunflowers.
A very old barn.....bet it's full of swallows!.....behind the sunflowers.
The sunflowers were all facing away from the road, but we pulled into a little parking area for some photos.
Lots of sunny heads.
I like the orderly rows.
Trying to get them facing the other way....unfortunately my car was sitting at the end!
Not quite ripe......maybe next time we see them there will be birds plucking seeds out, unless they harvest them.
Riper!
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9 comments:
Butterfly road must be a great place to visit.
I enjoy all your pictures.The rows of sunflowers is a unique way to shoot them.
Blessings,Ruth
What a wonderful post! Love the fields of sunflowers, especially the one showing the old barn! You sure were lucky to get so many kinds of butterflies. That Zebra is lovely.
Hi Mary, Love seeing all of your butterflies...Glad you saw 5 (or more) different kinds... That's neat!!!
Love the sunflowers also... Those are the types of flowers which make me smile...
Bet that ole barn is full of Swallows... Why don't you check it out????
Hugs,
Betsy
Just love this post Mary. I dont know which I prefer, the butterflies or the sunflowers? :)
A lovely series of butterfly pics Mar, thank you. I have never even heard, let alone seen, the American Snout Butterfly before. So interesting. Your sunflower shots were lovely also.
An English Girl Rambles
Ruth: Thanks...someone obviously planted these sunflowers for a reason...harvest, or to attract something later for the hunters in that area?
Dorothy: It was a nice drive. I like that barn, too, but it is way off the road near the river. Zebras are pretty neat.
Betsy: Thanks...I did check one barn for swallows....they don't like me doing it :-)
Joan: I'm sure you would vote for the butterflies, "Bug Lady".
Denise: I had not heard of them until last year when I first found them and looked them up to see what on earth they were.
You get A+++++++ for the photos today...love them all. For a few years here, there were fields of sunflowers but none the past 3 or 4 years. I really love those shots...but then I love all the butterflies, too.
I like all the piccies Mary sounds and looks like a nice day. XXX Don
I love the sunflowers! Ann
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