tiger swallowtail — 2014 — The 21st Century Matriarch

There have not been as many butterflies in our area this summer so I was delighted to photography two enjoying my deck garden in August and this week. In August, the butterfly weed and marigolds were the big attraction. Note how battered the edges of the wings look in this view of the feeding insect (with the butterfly pot decoration overhead).

I’m always surprised at how hairy the area where the winds and body overlap looks…at the powdery blue…at the delicacy of the whole wing.

From the side, the body looks robust compared to the legs and the proboscis. This insect spent quite a lot of time with the marigolds - so maybe the flowers will produce a lot of seeds.

This week the draw for the tiger swallowtail was the zinnias. When the wings are held vertically they are folded a little as well. Their ribs show more.

It was a breezy day so the insect would flatten itself to maintain its stance on the flower. The wings look very symmetrical when they are fully extended.

Notice that the edges of the wing are battered in this one too. This butterfly spent quite a long time at with the zinnia - flying away for a few seconds and then returning - and I’ll keep the seeds that develop over the next few weeks.

As one of my first projects after cleaning up my old microscope, I decided to look at some insect wings I had found in my yard last summer: a cicada and butterfly. I posted about the cicada back in August shortly after I found it in the grass. The wing was the only part of the butterfly I found; the rest of the insect must have been dinner for some other creature. Both wings had some dust accumulated but made easy subjects. I looked at them with the magnifying glass first - in the same way I had looked at the peacock feathers last week.

The framework of the cicada wing near where it joined the body of the cicada was a nice green color and looked very sturdy in the magnifying glass (image above). When I looked at it with the microscope, bristles were evident and the color became even more sticking (three levels of magnification below).

The structure of the butterfly wing using the magnifying glass was just barely evident(image below). It already does not look as smooth as a butterfly wing observed without magnification.