Saturday, August 18, 2012

Lazy moth and fluttery butterfly

I removed a moth from the wall over our bed, and stored it in a bottle, then forgot to look at it for two days. When I finally remembered, it seemed dead. I shook it out into the lid, and took a couple of quick photos. Just in case; skipping that step has made me lose too many interesting critters.


Moth on orange lid in morning sunlight

I wanted a better background, and shook the lid over a plate. The moth stayed stuck on the lid, so I brushed it off. And no, it wasn't dead; it flew away before it even reached the plate.

Five minutes later, I discovered it on the curtain beside the table.

"That's enough activity for today, thank you."

Laurie shook it off after I'd taken the photos, and shooed it out the door. In the afternoon, I found it on the backside of the curtain. It's still there, unmoving, two days later.

Any flower bed I've investigated in this area has at least one of these busy butterflies:

Skipper on mint


They're never still, even "resting" on a stem; they're always turning from side to side, adjusting their wing angle, looking here and there, then springing up to jitterbug from bloom to bloom again. We have taken umpteen photos of empty butterfly parking spots.

4 comments:

  1. I'm convinced they sense the motion of a finger pressing the button down and flee before the shot is actually taken. I was trying to capture a tiny fly today; it stayed perfectly still as I jammed a giant macro lens in its compound eyes, but then skittered up and back down elsewhere on the leaf as I took the shot. I guess, considering the fly's enemies, it makes sense; danger is probably always within a certain proximity, but it is the lunge forward that it has to guard against.

    At least we aren't wasting film...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Strikes me you might be interested in a post on 'Jessica's Nature Blog' - 'Eye to Eye with a Ghost Crab'

    http://tinyurl.com/c5alqfg

    where the crab she is filming takes an interest in her lens.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Skippers make me think of being a little girl in Compton, California. My best friend had a whole fence full of vines with flowers. They just loved hanging out there. - Margy

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fertanish; that may be, or else they read minds.

    Lucy, thanks; very interesting!

    ReplyDelete

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