The sun was so bright (and HOT), and the glare on the lake made it difficult to see what I was photographing. Had to get home and download photos to really see this beauty. Pulled out all the field guides, but my fried mind could not ID it as a spicebush swallowtail, Eastern black swallowtail, or female tiger swallowtail with dimorphic coloration. So I posted the photos on iNaturalist and took a long nap, much like the peddler in Caps For Sale. When I awoke, swallowtails had stolen all my caps and flown up into a tall sycamore tree!
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| The tiger stripe shows on the underwing now that I know what to look for. |
Three naturalists had kindly identified my butterfly observation as the dark female form of the Eastern tiger swallowtail. One local master naturalist had identified the food plant of the swallowtail as a type of loosestrife, Lythrum alatum.
© 2014-2015 Nancy L. Ruder
2 comments:
I am SO grateful to all those kind people on the internet willing to help with identification. These are beautiful shots.
collagemama -- is this blog intended to be personal and not public? If I am intruding I would like to apologize. I noticed your gravatar doesn't link to this blog.
Debra--Thanks for calling my attention to the unlinked situation! I've gotten lazy and far behind on behind-the-scenes blog maintenance. Sorry to say I didn't know I even had a gravatar, and my profile dated to a long-ago vermicomposting Wordpress blog.
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