Veterans of years of sidling up to resting Buckeye butterflies, will agree that this is a thankless task. Buckeyes are super wary, and dislike your approach. You carefully, robotically move toward one, and before you move within 8 feet of them . . . Zoom! away they go. My Macro- Canon lens needs to be no more than 24″ from our Buckeye, and by the time I have lens to Buckeye . . . my Buckeye is no more!

That and I sincerely i wanted a good image of the ventral (lower) surface of the Buckeye’s wings. Most field guides share a good ventral look, but they use digital cameras to capture them, and my film camera can do much better real-time color. Add to that another challenge for field guides, in the production of the guides, most images suffer a bit, and do not achieve what the original did.

Score another check-mark for the Butterflies & Blooms in the Briar Patch Habitat (Eatonton, Georgia). This Junonia coenia was at rest and hiding along the Briar Patch trail. She tolerated my super slow approach, and I shot away. Hoping, hoping to score a UGA touchdown ( AKA an image that puts points on the board ).

Me? I like this one, much. Those ventral eyespots sport baby-blue, the color is rich, the wing surface fascinates, the eye will do, antenna passes, legs OK, palps too, and wing margins deserve a look.

What think you of this swell butterfly, found from Maine to Florida?

Jeff