Flying jewels

For the past four summers, I've planted and planned and pulled out and weeded and trimmed and generally tried to carefully choose and shepherd my landscape plantings.

And now it is paying off.

I don't know if it's because it simply took this long for a good crop of nectar plants to develop, or if it's because we've had an unusually wet summer, or what, but there are butterflies all over the place. (And a few of the moths that I consider "honorary butterflies")

Butterflies are one of my favorite groups of creatures. Part of it is that they're so accessible - I will most likely never see a clouded leopard in its natural habitat, but butterflies - they're right there. Anywhere where there's a patch of sun and a plant with sweet-smelling, nectar-producing flowers, they're there.

And where I live we have a huge variety of butterflies - including several species of the large and impressive swallowtails (I have tiger swallowtails around all the time, and black swallowtails, and the other day I saw a giant swallowtail). We also have lots of what would be called "LBJs" (or "Little Brown Jobs") if they were birds - only, in the butterfly realm, they're LBaOJs - little brown-and-orange jobs. There are several species of these and I'm not too good at telling them apart. And there's also a larger brown butterfly with a big white spot that is called a Buckeye.

We also have lots of tiny gray hairstreak butterflies, which are pretty and move fast and almost seem to travel in flocks like birds.

I also like butterflies because they're easy to observe. Unlike most wildlife, you can get within feet of them (sometimes, even, within inches) without disturbing them or putting either you or them at risk. So I've been getting a lot of chances to watch their behavior, how they travel from flower to flower, how they react when they encounter another butterfly (if it's a different species, they generally ignore it; if it's the same species, they either chase it off or chase it to try to mate with it - I can't quite tell what's happening there)

I also get lots of bumblebees, which I'm a bit more cautious about (they can sting, although they're a lot mellower than most bees are). They're interesting to watch, too - I noticed that at least one species, they go up and "feel" the point where the flower attaches to the stem before going into it. I assume they're testing to see if there's nectar in the flower, if it's worth the effort of forcing their way into the bloom. And it's cool to see a bee with full "pollen baskets" - structures on their legs where they carry pollen to take back to the nest to feed their young. Sometimes the baskets are different colors depending on what flowers the bees have been visiting - pale or dark or more yellow or more orange.

Different species seem to come at different times of day. The big butterflies seem most active in the cool of the day (morning and evening), the bees are around most of the time, and the little butterflies seem most active in the afternoons.

Another thing I've seen - for the first time this year - are hawkmoths and sphinx moths. These two species excite me because they're cool to watch - they're large, as far as moths go. And their bodies have a different configuration than your typical clothes-moth or meal-moth: fat furry bodies (I think there are two species of hawkmoths: the larger one has an olive green body and the smaller has a body that is more gold). They fly "flat," like hummingbirds fly (another name for them is hummingbird moth) and they hover in front of the flower while drinking from it, instead of landing and hanging on like the butterflies do.

I've seen LOTS of the hawkmoths this summer - they are out early in the morning in force, and also again at dusk, but I often see one or two working through the flowers in the afternoon.

The other day I also saw a Sphinx moth. These have the same basic configuration as the hawkmoths (fat body, hovering flight style), but they are larger and have pink and white stripes on them. I had never seen one "in real life" (only in photographs), so that was very exciting. (Just as birders have life lists, or people who train-spot look for particular locomotives...bugs can be interesting too, especially the first time you see a "new" one).

There's a certain peace to watching butterflies - it's kind of like watching fish in an aquarium. They're brightly colored, they have sort of a floating movement, they don't require interaction from you (I think it's in part the "neutralness" of the fish tank that makes it soothing - you don't have to do anything but watch the fish).

I also take a certain pride that in my carefully chosen and tended plantings, I am providing nectar - to fuel the continued lives of these butterflies, and hopefully to provide the energy for the production of the next generation. (I sort of "said" [in my mind] to the hawkmoths the other day: "Eat up...and then go find the plant your larvae eat and make lots of babies!" [I think the hawkmoth babies eat honeysuckle, if it's the species I think it is].)