Oddly, with all that we have had blooming in this yard since we have moved here, the summer months have been a little bare. Too hot for anything to survive. A little strange for us since we are used to bountiful flower beds and plentiful vegetable gardens in the summer. (do you like that sentence?) The one plant that has been constantly blooming is this lantana. We have this one in orange and one in purple.
The flower blossoms are two toned, yellow and orange. Quite pretty. It seems to be a very hardy plant and it also seems that they attract a lot of...
...butterflies. A whole flock of these butterflies were getting their fill of nectar. (do butterflies fly in flocks?)I spent a little time capturing these with my zoom lens. I couldn't narrow this post down to just a few photos, so grab a cool beverage and enjoy.
Double the flutter.
Notice the bodies have the little white dots too.
There were about twenty of the ones above. Sorry, I didn't research to see what kind they were. They were all fluttering around in a group together. And then over on a different plant I saw something else. Does any one remember that Sesame Street song "One of these things is different from the others?"
This guy. He was bigger than the others. Stuck to himself. And posed nicely for my camera.
While the other butterflies would flap their wings to fly and keep them really still as they were gathering their snack, this one constantly flapped it's upper section of wings.
As you can see here, he was kind enough to demonstrate this for you.
And off he went.
Like most of the creatures, large and small, that have visited this yard they stay for a little while and then move on. We have occasionally seen these butterflies off and on, but this was the first time I saw them in a large group. I hope these are the only thing we see in a large group.
They look like Monarch Butterflies and perhaps are beginning their migration.
ReplyDelete