Lepidoptera Lovers: Butterfly Kisses

[freedombecki]

Finally found a picture of a butterfly quilt I made a few years back, then sold to someone who said he wanted a quilt gift for someone who likes red.

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[freedombecki]

The Gulf Frittilary Butterfly life cycle

Gulf Fritillary

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[freedombecki]

The Gulf Fritillary is a striking, bright orange butterfly of the family Nymphalidae and subfamily Heliconiinae. It was formerly classified in a separate family, the Heliconiidae or longwing butterflies, and like other longwings it does have long, rather narrow wings in comparison with other butterflies. It is not closely related to the true fritillaries. It is a medium to large butterfly, with a wingspan of from 6 to 9.5 cm. Its underwings are buff, with large silvery spots. It takes its name from the fact that migrating flights of the butterflies are sometimes seen over the Gulf of Mexico.


The Gulf Fritillary is commonly seen in parks and gardens, as well as in open country. Its range extends from Argentina through Central America Mexico, and the West Indies to the southern United States, as far north as the San Francisco Bay Area on the west coast. It is occasionally found further north in the US.

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Awesome page.​

 

[freedombecki]

Have a lovely Christmas, everyone.
photo credits
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[freedombecki]

This year, I noticed that not only does the Audubon Society publish the best bird calendar in the whole world, their butterfly calendar is a winner, too. I ordered both of them and placed the butterfly one where we write doctor's appointments and when to pay bills in the kitchen. January's most beautiful, large image of a butterfly (all of them really,) displayed most prominently is Panacea procilla, a fabulous blue butterfly that flits about from Panama to the Amazon River basin. I think I fell in love with blue (again).

Photo credits
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[freedombecki]

The 2011 and 2012 Calendars from the Audubon Society:

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[freedombecki]

Fun Butterfly Facts:

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We have gathered some strange butterfly facts to share with you. Amaze your friends! Enjoy!

• Butterflies range in size from a tiny 1/8 inch to a huge almost 12 inches.
• Butterflies can see red, green, and yellow.
• Some people say that when the black bands on the Woolybear caterpillar are wide, a cold winter is coming.
• The top butterfly flight speed is 12 miles per hour. Some moths can fly 25 miles per hour!
• Monarch butterflies journey from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of about 2,000 miles, and return to the north again in the spring.
• Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.
• Representations of butterflies are seen in Egyptian frescoes at Thebes, which are 3,500 years old.
• Antarctica is the only continent on which no Lepidoptera have been found.
• There are about 24,000 species of butterflies. The moths are even more numerous: about 140,000 species of them were counted all over the world.
• The Brimstone butterfly (Gonepterix rhamni) has the longest lifetime of the adult butterflies: 9-10 months.
• Some Case Moth caterpillars (Psychidae) build a case around themselves that they always carry with them. It is made of silk and pieces of plants or soil.
• The caterpillars of some Snout Moths (Pyralididae) live in or on water-plants.
• The females of some moth species lack wings, all they can do to move is crawl.
• The Morgan's Sphinx Moth from Madagascar has a proboscis (tube mouth) that is 12 to 14 inches long to get the nectar from the bottom of a 12 inch deep orchid discovered by Charles Darwin.
• Some moths never eat anything as adults because they don't have mouths. They must live on the energy they stored as caterpillars.
• Many butterflies can taste with their feet to find out whether the leaf they sit on is good to lay eggs on to be their caterpillars' food or not.
• There are more types of insects in one tropical rain forest tree than there are in the entire state of Vermont.
• In 1958 Entomologist W.G. Bruce published a list of Arthropod references in the Bible. The most frequently named bugs from the Bible are: Locust: 24, Moth: 11, Grasshopper: 10, Scorpion: 10, Caterpillar: 9, and Bee: 4.
• People eat insects – called "Entomophagy"(people eating bugs) – it has been practiced for centuries throughout Africa, Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and North, Central and South America. Why? Because many bugs are both protein-rich and good sources of vitamins, minerals and fats.
• YOU can eat bugs! Try the "Eat-A-Bug Cookbook" by David George Gordon , 10 Speed Press. Don’t want to cook them yourself? Go to HotLix for all sorts of insect goodies! My favorites are "Cricket-lickit’s" – a flavored sucker with a real edible cricket inside.
• Many insects can carry 50 times their own body weight. This would be like an adult person lifting two heavy cars full of people.
• There are over a million described species of insects. Some people estimate there are actually between 15 and 30 million species.
• Most insects are beneficial to people because they eat other insects, pollinate crops, are food for other animals, make products we use (like honey and silk) or have medical uses.
• Butterflies and insects have their skeletons on the outside of their bodies, called the exoskeleton. This protects the insect and keeps water inside their bodies so they don’t dry out

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[freedombecki]

The Butterfly Site Dot Com has a lot of butterfly coloring book pages that can be fun to color "Free Butterfly Coloring Pages"

They have pages and bookmarks. Here are one of each at the link above:

Buckeye Butterfly

Color a Butterfly Bookmark

There are quite a few butterfly pictures, and the Butterfly Site suggests they can be used as stencils, also. Enjoy!
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[mudwhistle]

 

[mudwhistle]

 

[freedombecki]

Wow, Mudwhistle. That one reminds me of hummingbird moths that used to hang around the honeysuckles in our home of 25 years in Wyoming. Thanks for sharing it.

credits at a cool website

And your other two moths' closeup shots? You have an eye for the strange and the beautiful, mudwhistle.
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[freedombecki]

Butterflies and Moths of North America | collecting and sharing data about Lepidoptera -For some of the best images of your favorite species of Lepidoptera.

This one is named the Red-spotted Purple Butterfly and is found from Tennessee to Texas, maybe more states than that. He's fun, because his spots are underneath his beautiful blue wings as you will see below:
top view, Limenitis arthemis astyanax

underside view, Limenitis arthemis astyanax

and does he ever have a crazy-looking caterpillar

photo credits
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[Conservative]

The Monarch has always been my favorite.

 

[freedombecki]

The Monarch has always been my favorite.

I love Monarchs too, Conservative. Last summer was so dry, I only saw one, and it was late after our first fall rain. Thanks for sharing the pic.

 

[freedombecki]

Luminous butterflies from China...

credits
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[freedombecki]

I was looking for named species of Chinese butterflies. Apparently there is an enormously wonderful group at the Glasshouse at Wisley, the UK of tropical zone butterflies, China and elsewhere.

They offer a wonderful tour of the facility here with people enjoying the beautiful creatures:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F49nVtz-VCs"]Butterflies in the Glasshouse at RHS Garden Wisley - YouTube[/ame]​

 

[freedombecki]

Spring will be here momentarily. We're already seeing an abundance of green, little sweet purple and white carpet-style flowers in the field and around the pond, and nonstop green grasses due to much-needed spring rains. I took the tractor out, and in some places by the fence, the grass was knee-high and thicker than thieves. This morning I was contemplating our good fortune after last year's horrid summer of drought and a 60-day stretch of unrelenting 100F+ higher temperatures. I've never seen such a summer deadly to our beautiful tall pines of the piney woods.

This morning, I was wondering what spring butterflies we might enjoy seeing soon. (I've already met a couple of mosquitoes, quite uncommon for February, and need to up the ante on thiamine uptake forthwith.) Anyway, I went to Bing! and found a number of websites giving "spring" butterflies as this that or the other. The last butterflies I remember following the drought were teeny, tiny sulphurs with wings the size of a lady-s trim pinkie fingernail. They were this fluttery pale green color. What next? Well, I'm not sure what we will see bordering the piney woods, but I think I will pick up my nature walks out back and scan for that elusive first member of the lepidoptera family flitting about in cool fields--if there is such a thing, that is. In the meantime, the first website I opened had a monarch butterfly as a spring habitue of our area. I think it's a little early for those, but ya never know, really. Anyway, FWIW, one site cited the mourning cloak butterfly, but the picture is a flickr, which I don't think you can share, so I listed the link on the name of the creature. They too mentioned the azure butterfly, along with a pic of its white and black speckled underwing in raised position.

here's a view or two... Photo credits at Wikipedia

 

[freedombecki]

Calendar moth and bird for the day are both blue. The National Audubon Society puts out really terrific calendars that show a bird a day on one and a butterfly a day on the other. I'm lucky enough to have both calendars for 2012.

It's hard to tell from the pictures on my calendar the size of the Blue Morpho, but it seems to be 5 to 7 inches. It dwells in South and Central America and parts of Mexico.

photo credits at TrekNature

As its common name implies, the blue morpho butterfly’s wings are bright blue, edged with black. The blue morpho is among the largest butterflies in the world, with wings spanning from five to eight inches. Their vivid, iridescent blue coloring is a result of the microscopic scales on the backs of their wings, which reflect light. The underside of the morpho’s wings, on the other hand, is a dull brown color with many eyespots, providing camouflage against predators such as birds and insects when its wings are closed. When the blue morpho flies, the contrasting bright blue and dull brown colors flash, making it look like the morpho is appearing and disappearing. The males’ wings are broader than those of the females and appear to be brighter in color. Blue morphos, like other butterflies, also have two clubbed antennas, two fore wings and two hind wings, six legs and three body segments -- the head, thorax and abdomen.

Also, with the disappearing rain forest areas of the tropics, the blue morpho is becoming a threatened specie.


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[freedombecki]

credits and enchanting story of the Amazon forest
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[Douger]

credits and enchanting story of the Amazon forest
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That aint the Amazon. I can walk to that tree in under an hour.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZReIyb2BB8]the blue butterfly legend (Costa Rican Rain Forest), la mariposa azul - YouTube[/ame]