I'm not a fan of any creeping, crawling or especially, flying insects. And to me butterflies fall into the latter category. I recall years ago having to go to a butterfly sanctuary in the UK with one of my children's school outings where these insects fluttered around your head or landed on you. I think I died a thousand deaths that day as I resisted the urge to swat and flick them away.
I still don't like them. Butterflies are simply a more attractively coloured bug in my eyes.
On the edge of one of the meadows on the property is a section of herbs and flowers that were transplanted very haphazardly and left to grow wild. There's sweet cicely, meadowsweet, motherwort and other herbs mixed in with a variety of traditional 'cottage garden' flowers such as Sweet Williams, baby's breath and Shasta daisies.
The daises were attracting a large number of butterflies - monarchs I believe and I took some photos. I even got close(ish) to one to photograph it. I had never seem these butterflies in large numbers in the garden before and at one point it seemed as if every flower head had an insect on it.
6 comments:
Nice photos.:) I believe those are Red Admiral butterflies on your flowers. We've had quite a few in our area this summer. Must have been a good year for them. Monarchs have been few and far between. I've only seen two all summer.
Thanks Billie. I'm not up on identifying butterfly species. I'm sure you're right and now I think about it, we don't usually see Monarchs until later in the season here.
I'm the bug certified bug catcher in this family, as long as its not a maggot I have to get rid of it lol everyone else hates them
haven't really seen a lot of butterflies this year or the last. Usually see a few but I think all the rain last year effected their numbers.
Jeanette - having a phobia myself I am very sympathetic to anyone who has a problem with a particular creature. I think you were enormously brave to go to the butterfly sanctuary all those years ago.
On the other hand, I love your butterfly photos and envy you their visit to the daises. Thank you for getting up close to 'capture' them for us. :)
What a wonderful living collection !
Jeannette, those are Red Admirals, and I could be wrong, but I don't believe we have monarch butterflies in Newfoundland--- monarchs live on milkweed, do they not? The yellow-and-black ones that resemble monarchs in Newfoundland are, I believe, tiger swallowtails.
Cate in Dundee
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