This is a Common Yellow Swallowtail.
This is a Viceroy or a Regal -- I haven't got a good shot of the tail to tell which. Most likely a Viceroy, however, as it is too early here for the milkweed butterflies.
I took these on 'fine' with a Coolpix 8700, on auto, cropped the result and equalized the light using Corel's PhotoPaint. The Swallowtail is not as bright as it should be as the light kept changing on me.
This should have been the 'Travel writeup' Monday Mission. I am ducking out tonight, but hope to get it up on Tuesday.
oh how gorgeous! I just love butterflies, I might have lost my breath at the sight of those
ReplyDeleteWow, those are waaaay better than the pictures I took at the butterfly room at the Pacific Science Center, and these are in your yard!
ReplyDeleteThese are breathtaking, flutter's right.
ReplyDeleteWow. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteWe rode our bikes to a local park on Sunday -- it's more a nature reserve than a park, really -- and we saw FIVE different kinds of butterflies in a 10 foot radius. That seemed like a good sign of something-or-other to me. Three of the butterflies seemed like moths, like the kind you see swirling around a light at night, but the other two looked similar to your picture. I think we saw the top one, and then we saw one similar to that but white instead of yellow and with blue on its tail. Soooo pretty. My daughter actually caught one of them.
ReplyDeleteWe also saw a snake. Do snakes eat butterflies?
Just beautiful! We just saw a Viceroy too, and it came back over to us five or six times. My boys were so excited, and talked about it all day. Thanks for visiting, BTW - I like your blog, and it means a lot to me that someone who isn't the same generation reads mine. That's what's so often missing from the blog world; the intergenerational aspect.
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