Hoo boy. The period that I’ve reached while going through the folders for the ‘Living in the past’ posts was dominated by arthropod photos, and while I actually produced new content yesterday, it was by visiting the butterfly house of the Museum of Life and Science, not to mention that I’ve got some video clips from this past summer that I’m trying to put together (more on that in a later post) that feature… more insects. Somebody send me an axolotl or a quokka or something…
Anyway, off we go!
I thought I could knock off this post quickly before the clock struck midnight, but soon realized that I couldn’t if I maintained my blogly standards of providing proper identification. This is partially my fault (maybe, anyway,) since the photos that I have of their provided butterfly guides are thirteen years old, which are quite likely out of date knowing how often the proper species names change, but I neglected to take new photos of the guides yesterday to see if they were updated. Even though I would have been double-checking online anyway. So, I’m doing confirming research as I go, or as much as I can reasonably provide with singular perspectives on arthropods that have a tendency to have wide color variations anyway. What this means is, trust these names at your own risk. I have no firm confidence that what we see here are a red lacewing (left, Cethosia biblis,) and a Harmonia tiger-wing (right, Tithorea harmonia,) and you’re absolutely on your own with all the the flower species. Lookit the colors and forget all else, okay?
Like this one. Nothing looked like it in the guide, but the pattern was closest to a clipper, and further research indicates that this may be a blue clipper (Parthenos sylvia lilacinus.) Cool colors, but this was the only time that I saw one.
And then there are these. By far, the most numerous residents in the butterfly house are the various postman (genus Heliconius,) of which there are countless species, and I have far too many photos of them anyway. But as a pair settled in on a flower spike, the shallow depth was easy to work with. We’ll go in tighter for detail.
Gotta get deep in those blossoms for the good stuff, right? Or maybe they’re wanted by the police. Or maybe we’re seeing a clumsy tryst – do those flowers meet in the middle? Let’s move on.
This one was easy enough, to a degree, and also quite numerous in the butterfly house, but impossible to mistake too. It’s a paper kite (Idea leuconoe,) perhaps the largest species in there, or at least among the top three, and very active yesterday (as opposed to the other two large species that were never seen flying.) There are 23 subspecies, so this is as specific as we’re getting, but at least they were more interesting than the postmans, even though I still have too many images of them from past visits.
I took a few moments to go fartsy, as well.
Actually, looking the the scalloped pattern on the trailing edges of the wings, this might be another lacewing, though it clearly isn’t the same one we saw earlier. I already closed the tab that had the various lacewing species on it, too. Screw it.
That pattern says ‘clipper’ again, but not the same species as before, so we’ll just go with Parthenos sylvia. We’re being fartsy, remember? Bathe in the aesthetics and don’t worry about it.
And we’ll do that ‘strong close’ thing again, with the return of the (a) red lacewing.
I have a confession to make, and please be understanding: this was rotated 90° clockwise, because the original position of butterfly and flower were actually sideways, but it looks much better this way and fits the blog format better. I know, I know, it’s shameless manipulation for egotistical reasons, but I’m permitted one a month because the content here is free. Maybe two. Certainly no more than six or eight within a four week period. But c’mon, look at that detail! Surely that’s worth a little digital fakery.
By the way, every once in a while I look through recent images to see how many would hold up as monochrome, and haven’t found many recently, but some of these might apply. And since we have a certain number of posts to reach this month…
[Huh. It’s 12:15 right now. I probably could have slipped in under the wire, if I hadn’t stopped to make hot chocolate…]