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Facebook Friends have been asking this brain energizing question today. It’s New Years Day and they’re asking what was the most exciting/amazing butterfly or bird or darner that you’ve seen this 2019?

Opened my Media Library on winged beauty.com and I went ahead and scrolled down through our what, 900 images?

Here’s where I stopped and day-dreamed. We were at the National Butterfly Center’s own trails, Nancy, John and I. It was the last week of that year. Brooklyn Boy here was reveling in the balmy 80’s that we were enjoying there, just 2 miles from the Mexican border and quite near the famous border wall.

There it was!! They told me that it was a Red Rim butterfly ( Biblis hyperia ). A super rare butterfly, seen by few of us, ever, and this one was so starkly fresh as to earn that coveted word, “gorgeous.” Glassberg’s A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America ( page 238 ) describes it as “Rare.”

For this me, it evoked those years when I was paying my way through college by being a Messenger boy in Manhattan, daily after classes. Too, it brought back memories of those 14 years that I was a realtor in that very same Manhattan. I was a wide-awake kid/guy, and I always noticed the rare excellence of women and men in that wonderland of an island.

Madison Avenue there was the most likely place to enjoy such sights. I love when butterflies conjure up memories . . .

Jeff