Fiery Skipper? No! “Sachem” (Sigh)

Five frames kept from today. I’ve been busy with a VBA programming project (my first, mostly-independently written little function) and I realized yesterday photographing the swallowtails in the campus garden what has been happening lately: I have been drifting away from the goal I set for myself last summer, which is to identify and know the critters in my part of the world.

Lately I have been “distracted” by the gorgeous swallowtails and I’ve been pursuing a shot with as much of a “wow-factor” as I could capture. That has led me to take too-many photos and with too-many photos comes a fair amount of time just to go through them and decide what to keep and what to trash. So today’s post is a not-terribly glamorous skipper-type butterfly in our back yard this morning. I also snapped a few of a Spicebush Swallowtail, but it didn’t tolerate my presence for long before flitting off in search of nectar without such a human presence. This Sachem doesn’t offer much of a “wow-factor,” but it’s one of the few butterfly species that has been a persistent visitor to our little garden in our little part of the world and also, they’re just fun to watch.

One year ago (“My, but what large eyes you have!”): http://365project.org/rhoing/365/2012-07-26
Two years ago (“Another travel day...”): http://365project.org/rhoing/365/2011-07-26

[KAL]

This Fiery Skipper is beautiful! Love the composition and detail! Fav

[Rick Schies]

Nice DOF

[MaryBeth Dailey]

It can be so easy to try to keep shooting the "glamorous" insects like the big gorgeous Swallowtails! I like the Fiery...I love their "vertical" wing parts..they look like jets. Oh wait..he only seems to have one on one side...Maybe it is the longtailed skipper that has those..and this one's wing is just broken? I hope not. Anyway...nature photography is so time consuming plowing through all the shots. It can wear one down! Glad you "came to your senses" and snapped out of your obsession. LOL

[Chris]

Beautiful details.

[Myrna O'Hara]

so clear, such good details.

[Angelique]

The color and tone is perfect!

[Thom Mitchell]

@espyetta I'm confused by the same elements — or missing elements — in this image, MaryBeth. There does seem to be that vertical forewing on the right side (the starboard side for boaters!), but it's hard to determine for the left (port) side. But one thing we know from Zebra Swallowtails and Tiger Swallowtails: the way the forewings and hindwings align sometimes makes it hard to see the "seam"!

[Mags]

Beautiful!