Showing posts with label spring azure butterfly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spring azure butterfly. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Oh, joy!

Evening Primrose, Oenothera biennis

I see, now, that the path has become green,
where I walk past the fields, standing brown and still, daily, back and forth.
Each time, waiting and watching for that defining moment—
the one act that, with it, brings the certainty of the emergence of spring.
While, beneath my feet, with every pass, it moves steadily forward.

Field Grasses

And from the woods, this eager green,
each day, too, grows stronger,
along each branch of the steadfast,
very first to fill the bare space.


Autumn Olive leafing out

Yet, the change, so subtle, with every day’s watching,
I barely recognize that point at which the path turned.
Until, onto brown from blue, 2 on gossamer wings tumble.
And touch briefly, as if to anoint this spot not yet woken.
And bring, with certainty, joy.


Spring Azure Butterfly, Celastrina ladon



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Sunday, August 10, 2008

"Let's be careful out there"

I was drawn to her, as she to the flower.
A Spring Azure the size of a dime, sipping slowly from Boneset in the field of goldenrod. Another of the Gossamer-winged, another Blue, in a rare moment of rest.


I inched the camera slowly forward, catching a picture every several inches until I was almost on top of her. Marveling at her fine features magnified by my lens—the coal black eyes, white-feathered legs, banded antennae…how perfectly lovely on one so small.

Abruptly, her wings flew open and it seemed she lunged forward, further into the flower from which she’d been feeding.
Then fluttered strongly, the dusty blues in reverse.


She’d been caught—in that instant. The powerful mantis-like front legs of an even smaller Ambush Bug held her firmly, while the toxin from its mouth acted fast.

I hadn’t seen her hiding within the white bloom--her light green forelegs the color of plant stems, orange eyes upon a cryptic face, so flower-like. As she waited, poised to snatch a visitor to her flower.

Within seconds both were still.
The open wings of gossamer blue, quiet.





I returned to the field the next morning.
On the leaf below, were 4 blue wings.


Ambush Bugs, Phymata sp., mating pair

click photos to enlarge
(do you see the Ambush Bug waiting in the first photo?)

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