Black Swallowtail butterfly and chrysalis

Each and every time I prepare a post for winged beauty, I scroll down through the 1,000 or more images in our Media Library. So many memories, people I worked the trails with, experiences running from incredible to mundane. All those times that you were not there with me.

There are several images stored in our Media Library, that I always slow down for. Mostly because they so sing to me, their beauty so extraordinary. Wingedbeauty.com has always been my way to share the beauty of butterflies, i.e., the magnificence of G-d’s handiwork.

This is one of those that urge me to stop and enjoy. She has just exited that empty chrysalis that you see in the background. She’s resting as she dries her huge wings. Just the most magnificent Eastern Black Swallowtail female.

Her wings are as ebony black as there can be. Her coral spots, blue flashes, white scallops are set in that pattern seen only in Black Swallowtails. Tails are intact, abdomen and thorax covered with milk-white spots. Her left eye (compound) is deeply black, her proboscis can be seen and her antennae are as dark as night. She sports an elegance that is unmistakable.

She’s the beauty featured in our Jeff’s Earrings series. She and her buff male, also newly eclosed (just exited from his chrysalis) brought a tear to my eye, for Frieda A”H passed 8 years before, and when those exquisite swallowtails finally moved, to perch on my ear, Oh, how I knew that Frieda was somehow responsible for such a surreal experience.

This is my capture, and Jeff’s Earrings were shot by Sylbie, who inexplicably arrived at the Butterflies & Blooms Briar Patch Habitat I, at just the best possible moment. I deftly handed her my Canon, and Sylbie photographed the Jeff’s Earrings as they unfolded.

I look and re-look here, and I’m so proud that this one is . . . mine.

Jeff