Category Archives: Checkerspot

Baltimores Are Flying . . . Now

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Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow in Jamestown Audubon Center, NY

We all have our own stored away visual memories of butterflies that have left us in Awe! I’ve never counted how many my brain has in its butterfly met image stored library?

Oh, you want me to guess? I’d guess this decades long photographer of butterflies has more than 50 all-time Happily Shocked! images of butterflies tucked away in my cerebral gray matter.

This is one of them. That newly eclosed Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly seen at the Jamestown Audubon Center (they changed their name after) in far western New York State. To this day, I Love this image and find this butterfly to be a reminder of G-d’s creative beauty. I do.

Jeff

Checkerspot Butterfly seen in the Perennial flower beds at the National Butterfly Center

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Theona Checkeerspot Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at the National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX

You’re always to share the where of it? This Checkerspot butterfly was seen in the Perennial beds of the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas during Christmas week. At the time, I think my friends shared that this was a Theona Checkerspot butterfly.

Now I’m carefully studying this image, wanting to be sure that these nearly fully displayed wings are the right dorsal forewing and the right dorsal hindwing. Working from there, I am struggling with images I compare it with, in Glassberg’s A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America. 

Is this a Theona Checkerspot? I can’t be sure. I know that like humans, butterflies can vary some.

Help in ID’ing would be welcomed?

Jeff

Please Help Jeff Get This?

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Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow in Jamestown Audubon Center, NY

Yes, this is one of my absolute favorite images. We were at the Jamestown Audubon Center (recently renamed) in far western New York. Barbara Ann Case (OBM”) was there with me, she having been one of its most stalwart volunteers before her health challenges. This Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly flew in, and I was stunned by its beauty. I shot away with my Fuji Velvia 50 film, and well . . . love this result.

Can you help me with something I puzzle over? In the 25 years that I’m seeking butterflies, I have never known of a “famous,” “prominent,” or “celebrity” man or woman who too loves butterflies and go out and searches for butterflies.

Horses have their lovers, as do dogs and cats and such. All have wealthy and “famous” fans. Butterflies, I think not. Why is that?

Jeff

Ten (10) Years of TomFoolery

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Filed under Audubon Community Nature Center, Jamestown, NY, Checkerspot, Eatonton, GA, Pearly-Eye, Raccoon Creek State Park, PA, Swallowtail
Northern Pearly Eye Butterfly, photographed by Jeff Zablow at Raccoon Creek State Park in Pennsylvania

Northern Pearly Eye butterfly

 

Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly, photographed by Jeff Zablow at the Jamestown Audubon Center in Jamestown, NY.

Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly

 

Male Black Swallowtail Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow in the Briar Patch Habitat in Eatonton, GA

Me? I’ve taught high school Biology to thousands of young Americans, in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am pleased with the respect and admiration that my students afforded me. I retired in 2006, to become the caregiver for Frieda A”H. I lost that job, when she passed in January 2008.

I’ve been in the bushes as much as possible, for these last 25 years. I search for and photograph butterflies. This wingedbeauty.com that you’re reading here is the product of my love and fascination with butterflies & wildflowers.

I have watched the health and well being of our land become taken over by ‘naturalists’ who claim 1) that they must protect our land for all of us and 2) lecture and alarm us that our pristine habitat will soon be destroyed by “Global Warming.” I have watched as they chastise us for the coming annihilation of our fauna and flora, and for the coming destruction of all that is wild and loved,.

It seems that to be an academic today, you must join the ranks of the alarmists. You must declare that butterflies, birds, wildflowers, dragonflies, wasps, moths and macro- animals are all soon to leave us.

All not so. I spend hundreds/thousands of hours in the bush, seeking and searching for butterflies, and I can Thankfully report that they are well, normal and unchanged, with an excellent future. There is no Global Warming and there will be none in the future. G-d is in control and has been since the beginning of time.

True it is, that if the relations of the loudest Global Warming supporters would stop developing valuable habitat, usually the home of endangered butterflies and living things, if they would stop developing the choicest sites along our oceans, lakes and rivers . . . if they would stop overdeveloping California, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Washington State, Arizona, Florida, New Mexico and more, our children and grandchildren would so benefit, and species would not continue disappearing.

There is no Global Warming. These 3 American butterflies attest to that.

Jeff

How To Respond To a Special Photograph?

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Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow in Jamestown Audubon Center, NY

Each time I am to choose a new image to post onto wingedbeauty.com, I open our Media Library and review the 1,000 or so images that reside there. Twenty four years of images return the favor, and I begin to enjoy a soup of thoughts, washed in memories recent and not so recent.

I took them all, and they remind of the time I badly wanted an image on a tiny backroad, layed down to capture it Macro-, only to hear a vehicle approach. My legs? They were laying beyond the berm of this dirt road, exposed. Decision? I chose to take the image. The vehicle came and went, and I still have both of my legs and feet. Men!

Of all of the times that I went off trail in Israel, the HolyLand, trying for butterfly images. There are vipers in the Middle East that aren’t found in the USA. People die there, from venomous bites. Some of my Media Library images recall such foolishness on my part.

Other images, like this one, of a Baltimore Checkerspot, enthrall me. I love this image, and I am much pleased that it is my image. This Baltimore is, choose the word? Gorgeous? Amazing? G-d’s creative work? A stunner?

It tickles me that we have a bunch of ‘special images’ now. The years have gifted us with those of Monarchs, Northern Pearly-Eye, Viceroy, those coupled Eastern Black Swallowtails, Question Mark, that Maniola in Israel, and Mourning Cloak.

I like writing this, for I’ve done this for years, years of encouraging myself that it is vital work for me to do, to feed the esthete in me, and to share among G-d’s finest works.

Jeff