I shared with you a Erato heliconian butterfly, a Malachite butterfly and a very large Monarch butterfly. I saw them all at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas near the border wall. Truth be told, we’d see a butterfly, then those with me would whisper its name. Me, with substantial hearing loss in my right ear, would struggle to hear what they said. They’d whisper “Erato!” and standing to their left, I’d (LOL) revert to my Brooklyn roots and ask who’d name a butterfly “Erotic?” This query garnered interesting looks, but not laughs.

The last week in December 2017, and here again with moderate excitement they’d share in low voice, Clytie Ministreak butterfly. ‘Clytie what?’ Know too that this was fun, much fun over that nearly a week in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas.

Ministreaks are hairstreaks. All hairstreaks fascinate me. Nearly all hairstreaks are tiny, very tiny. When I was a kid, those boys who couldn’t give back what they got, stayed inside their homes after they came home from school. These hairstreaks, absent the ability to strike back, amaze this city kid, for they perch on their flowers in full view, nectaring with no visual rush, and slowly move about the flowerhead, oblivious to the Macro- photographer now within 18 inches away. I have never seen a hairstreak assaulted while it was feeding at a flower, or while it was perched on a leaf. Within one hundred feet of this pookie butterfly are birds, wasps, lizards, beetles, darners, and mantids. This natural world brings out the amazed boy in me, in so many ways.

Lots of friends and family remain puzzled at this, what I do. Me? For me it begins with Clytie what?

Jeff