A Splash of Color

Cabbage Whites are delicate gems, as are all butterflies, and are beautifully engineered and adapted to their food species and for slurping nectar from a variety of flowers. The one thing the CW lacks, however, is vibrant color. But the day after the spectacular CW light show brought that splash of color in the form of a perfect specimen of the Red Admiral.

The Red Admiral is not an officer in the Russian Navy as its name may suggest; it is one of the more common butterflies in our area and one of the few that I can identify without frantically thumbing through a field guide.

The National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Butterflies has a couple of interesting statements about Vanessa atalanta:

“Unmistakable and unforgettable, the Red Admiral will alight on a person’s shoulder day after day in a garden.” I must say that this particular specimen had no intention of doing that. It rested first on bare ground and then on the leaf where I photographed it, with some difficulty because it was several feet away and unapproachable because of the intervening poison ivy.

“In midsummer it is not unusual to see them chasing each other or Painted Ladies just before a thunderstorm or at dusk.” This one was a loner. Maybe that statement would apply to a Russian naval officer, but this insect just sat a spell and all too quickly flew out of sight into a nearby thicket. (Just in case you wondered, the Painted Lady is another butterfly, closely related to the Red Admiral.)

Anyway, the color splash provided by this lovely Lepidopteran made me quickly change lenses and still fail to get a perfect shot. It only gave me a few seconds of shooting time before it decided to leave.

Maybe there will be more butterfly photography opportunities as the summer progresses.

Prayer for patience is a constant requirement, both in photography and blogging.