It’s September 21st and I’m visiting family in Sun City West, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.

As always, I manage to find time to photograph. White Tank Mountain Regional Park is a 35 minute drive from my host. Driving through ‘the Valley’ was very interesting, because at the time (2009) they were building thousands (yep, thousands) of new houses. Big beautiful houses and you know the rest of that story.

The White Tank Mountains loom over the flat desert and visually provide a very striking contrast. September in southcentral Arizona is very, very hot. I knew enough to arrive there very early, and to complete my hike well before noon. But it was quite hot. I brought lots of spring water. I found the terrain in White Tank Mountain to be parched and dry: very dry.

Even so, I did find some wildflower plants in flower. Those flowers were tiny and few in number, but they bravely offered their meager nectar to butterflies, bees and flies. This photograph suggests how devoid of moisture that habitat was.

This Arizona Powdered Skipper respectfully showed up and stopped to rest, enabling me to shoot this image. We were in a dry creek bed. Three visits there indicate that that’s the best bet for a location in which to find wildlife. How a Codatractus arizonensis manages in that heat and with such meager nectar possibilities is startling.

Jeffrey