Butterfly afternoon

Torrential rain has kept me indoors most of the time for the past two days, but the sun came out this afternoon, and I noticed that the milkweed was chock-a-block with insects swarming the blossoms. They were probably overfull of watery nectar after all that rain. Along with the usual complement of wasps, small bees, and monarch caterpillars, four species of butterflies were foraging intensively, and there were several individuals of each.

The Monarch butterflies were bossy and kept chasing the others away, but with four bushy clumps of milkweed plants, they couldn't exclude all the other foragers.



The Swallowtails were back, but only a single individual at a time.

Two new species appeared in the mix, and I had to look them up to be sure who they were. Here's a good website to do that. http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/ . Go to the Image Gallery if you just want to compare pictures with what you see outdoors.

This is a Red-spotted Purple (I've never seen one of these before). Handsome, isn't it?

And this is a Red Admiral (they are pretty common), and I found them on the Coneflowers and the Blazing Star today also.

The Red Admiral was very cooperative and let me take a lot of pictures of its bizarre facial features. Check out those ropey antennae with the bullbs on the end and his funny-looking face in this profile. His eyes look like they have slits, instead of the usual compound facets. That yellow thing coming out of what looks like his turned up nose is the proboscis that it stuck down into the flower to slurp up the nectar. You can see a few of the milkweed's yellow pollen sacs stuck to his legs.

A beautiful afternoon for butterflies.

(P.S. If you click on the image, you'll get an enlarged view.)