Readers’ wildlife photos

Two kind readers sent photos yesterday, so we’re good until Tuesday.  If you’re off work for the Thanksgiving week, why not collect some of your good wildlife photos (if you have them) and send them in?Thanks!

Today we have some lovely butterfly pics from Pratyaydipta Rudra, a professor of statistics at Oklahoma State.  Pratyay’s captions and descriptions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. (I just found out that he and his wife share a photo website called “Wingmates“).

When birding gets slow during the summer, we often pay closer attention to the insects, especially the pollinators that are quite abundant during the hotter months. Our garden (as well as some local botanical gardens and farms) has plenty of native species that attract a variety of pollinators including butterflies and moths. Below are some butterfly images that I took earlier this year.

Gulf Fritillaries (Dione vanillae) on our Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). This plant attracts a huge number of pollinators over the summer, and it is also one of the host plants of Monarch butterflies:

Monarch (Danaus plexippus), caught in flight with an interesting morning lighting:

Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia) on Indian heliotrope (Heliotropium indicum). This plant is not native to North America, but it is quite widespread in our area, and the flowers are pretty:

Gulf Fritillary (Dione vanillae) coming in for landing on a zinnia. Flight photography of butterflies is way more difficult than birds-in-flight photography, but possible with modern cameras and a lot of patience:

The larval stage of Gulf Fritillary (Dione vanillae), on a purple passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) plant, the host plant for them:

Two generations… This adult Gulf Fritillary (Dione vanillae) might be quite worn, but she stopped by to lay eggs, perhaps one last time, as one of the caterpillars from the next generation keeps munching on the leaves:

Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele) on Garden Phlox (Phlox paniculata). A relatively uncommon fritillary for us in this part of the state. In fact, it’s the first time I found one in our county:

Diana Fritillary (Speyeria diana) and Monarch (Danaus plexippus). This is one of my most favorite images from this summer. This was also my first encounter with a Diana Fritillary. This male Diana was nectaring on the Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) when the Monarch flew in. Mr Fritillary wasn’t happy at all:

There was some kickboxing that took place at this point and there was a clear winner…:

The fritillary was able to hold ground, and the Monarch took off:

American Snout (Libytheana carinenta). Not difficult to see why it is named that way. It’s always fun to find one of these little ones with the long “nose”!:

Eastern Tailed Blue (Cupido comyntas). These so-called tails are parts of their wing which they keep moving. This is theorized to be useful to fool the predators into thinking that these are their antennae. Many butterflies actually have several traits like this that give a “false head” impression. We present a Gray Hairstreak in the second image which has a similar false head:

A recent study found that these traits have evolved in a correlated manner, likely driven by a common selective pressure helping them to develop complex head-like structures on their posterior side.

Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus) – Another common butterfly in our area that has a similar “tail”:

Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) – A common butterfly, especially during the fall migration. For those of you who are interested in photography, this image was taken at ISO 256000 (by mistake), but the modern noise reduction programs are unbelievably capable of removing such noise due to low exposure:

Phaon Crescent (Phyciodes phaon). This one is relatively uncommon here. I was glad to find several this year:

The crescents are quite small, and Phaon Crescent (Phyciodes phaon) is typically smaller than the more common Pearl Crescent. Here is an image that has my two-year-old daughter’s finger as a reference. I am glad to have this new butterfly-watcher in our camp!: