Category Archives: Peacock

White Peacock Butterfly at the perennial gardens in the National Butterfly Center

Posted
Filed under National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX, Peacock, White Peacock

White Peacock Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at the National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX

Never saw one in western Pennsylvania during my 27 years of living there. Glassberg has them as R-U (Rare to Uncommon) in the northeastern USA. I’ve seen White Peacocks in Savannah Natonal Wildlife Refuge along the Georgia-South Carolina coastline and in Mississippi near the Delta. They’re the kind of butterfly species that just don’t excite most folks when they find one. I wonder why finding a White Peacock does not shoot up the blood pressure?

This fine White Peacock was seen in south Texas, at the perrenial gardens of the National Butterfly Center. I’ve waited this long to share this image with y’all, for fear that once again it would just not generate heavy traffic here. I’ll soon see if I was correct.

How many White Peacock fans are there?

Jeff

Why Malachite? Why not Peacock?

Posted
Filed under Malachite, National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX, Peacock

Peacock butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at the National Butterfly Center, Mission, TXMalachite Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at the National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX

Friends love Chevys. Others love Fords. Yuppies here and in New York love ‘Beemers’ (BMW’s), others love Nissans. Why?

My Christmas week trip to the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas near the border wall did not yield Jeffrey Glassberg or Jane Hurwitz, but I did meet my first White Peacock and my first Malachite butterfly! (I too met Javier and Mike Rickard).

I was OK with meeting and shooting this Peacock you see here. I was very excited to meet and photograph this Malachite, which friends there shared was an especially handsome one.

“OK” with finding this Peacock. “Very excited” to shoot away with this Malachite.

Why do some butterflies (Malachite for me) so excite us, even years later, while others (Peacock for me) are met with moderate excitement?

Why?

Jeff

Love this Butterfly? No. But Why?

Posted
Filed under National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX, Peacock

Peacock butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at the National Butterfly Center, Mission, TX

I count 1995 or so as the year that I decided to photograph butterflies. Life had always found me marching to my own drummer, and childhood had seriously taught me to learn the hard lesson of loneliness. Fortunately, I had the tools to make it on the streets of that Brooklyn, and I alway knew I could love, deeply.

Butterflies have occupied my mind and imagination since, and happily, that enthusiasm has not lessened. With Spring around the corner here in middle-Georgia, I spend much time thinking of where, what and which butterflies I would like to meet and re-meet. I’ve learned to reckon with limitation$ and to embrace the realization that I am one beat less than Ansel Adams and his ilk.

These decades have me thinking of Big questions, when I am in the field and when I am like here, at my 27″ iMac screen examining my craft work.

Large among the questions that visit me is this one. Why do I embrace, Love, images of certain butterflies? I easily include here: Coppers, Hairstreaks, Mourning cloak, Tortoiseshells, the Monarch, Common Mestra, Satyrs and the Alpines (though I’ve never seen one)?

I know, intellectually that this White Peacock butterfly, shot in the National Butterfly Center, the one near the border wall, is magnificent. Yet I am not excited when I’ve seen them, there’s no enthusiasm there. Add to that the Yellow butterflies, the White butterflies, the Checkerspots, Crescents, Ladies and the Skippers.

For a guy who has been thinking, deeply, since he was back there a 5-year old. I have not yet teased apart the reason for this ambivalence about this magnificent butterfly, the Peacock. A puzzle that. Yes?

Jeff