Last fall, I planted a couple of Butterfly Bushes and a couple of Honeysuckle vines, all in the hopes of attracting some Ruby Throated Hummingbirds when they migrate through. Apparently, I forgot to mention that to the hummingbirds since I've a better chance of seeing a pterodactyl in my yard than one of those tiny wing beaters. One out of two Butterfly Bushes is thriving, but neither of the Honeysuckle vines have flowered. I suspect they're not getting enough sun.
One positive note on the backyard lures developed this afternoon. About a half dozen Painted Ladies descended on my thriving Butterfly Bush. They're not skittish at all, so I was able to get right on top of them for some photos. The Painted Lady is thought to be the most widely distributed butterfly in the world, appearing on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. With a normal lifespan of 4 weeks, they tend to be local year round in the tropics, and appear in colder climates during the summer months. Occasionally, large masses of them will go on a northward migration binge, however none of those migrants survive the winter. In an odd evolutionary quirk, this species never migrates to the south.
Post processing today was quite simple and all in PSE. I applied a slight sharpening by duplicating the base layer, desaturating it, and applying a high pass filter with a 3 pixel radius in soft light blend mode. From there, I applied a levels adjustment to darken the background a bit. No color enhancements were applied.
