Category Archives: White Tank Mtn. Regional Park, AZ

Imagine Seeing a American Snout Butterfly 1,800 Miles from Home

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Filed under American Snout, White Tank Mtn. Regional Park, AZ

Snout Butterfly on a blooming flower photographed by Jeff Zablow at White Tank Mountains Regional Park, Arizona

We travel and we await all that’s new. Travel some 1,800 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Phoenix, Arizona, and my visits to White Tank Mountains Regional Park, west of Phoenix delivered just that. How exciting to anticipate new butterflies, new plants, new birds and new lizards at any moment, any minute, anywhere! How much more fulfilling to find new, new, new.

Imagine. Imagine my surprise to find a ‘friend’ there, a butterfly that I’d see occasionally back home then, in Pittsburgh. I was working my way along an arroyo (dry river bed . . . Shhh! That I was not supposed to be down in, because of flash flood! risk . . . Angelic Jeff?) strewn with big rock. It was bone dry, and there were few, very few flowers at all. What flowers there were, were visited by butterflies and bees. I stationed myself at those flowers found, and here is an example of the reward I reaped, for patiently waiting on butterflies to arrive.

I was impressed much that the American Snout Butterfly was near identical to those back at Raccoon Creek State Park in southwestern Pennsylvania. It was sort of nice to meet a ‘friend,’ so far away from home, and in a mysterious, a bit risky dangerous and drier than dry bone arroyo.

This Post here in part because of memories it elicited, I there visiting my Mother-In-Law, Eda Lehman A”H, who lived near there in Sun City West, Arizona, a Phoenix suburb. Eda Lehman was a slave in Nazi concentration camps for 5 and 1/2 years, somehow survived those killing fields, and passed away 3 days ago, having lived to 100 years of age. Butterflies can come with memories and such . . . .

Jeff

An American Snout Butterfly on Sweet Flowers in a Bone Dry Arroyo

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Snout Butterfly on a blooming flower photographed by Jeff Zablow at White Tank Mountains Regional Park, Arizona

Working that bone dry arroyo in the White Tank Mountains Regional Park just west of Phoenix, Arizona. There were scant few flowers to be found there. Those flowers that I was able to find for sure attracted butterflies. When I found flowers in full bloom, all I had to do was wait moments, and from what seemed nowhere, butterflies of known and unknown species would fly directly in, and they’d work the open flowers slowly and methodically.

This American Snout butterfly (Libytheana carinenta) was a fine, willing subject. They please me, when they flash their vivid orange-red patches, white blazes and my bunch recalls Jimmy Durante and his ‘schnoz,’ which the Snouts extended papla always, always remind me of, and the Durante memories . . . make me smile.

That arroyo, please never enter one. I did, many times those years visiting family in Sun City West (Del Webb development). Yes, signs warned to never enter them. Admittedly, I disregarded those signs, and in retrospect, a flash flood, arriving at high speed, and drowning this boy from far away Brooklyn would have been not the way I want to pass.

Jeff

Unsolved Mysteries at White Tank Mountains Park

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Filed under Other Insects, White Tank Mtn. Regional Park, AZ

Darner-type fly, photographed by Jeff Zablow in White Tank Mts. Regional Park, AZ

You and I don’t like unsolved mysteries. For me, field work in distant habitat often ends with questions that go long unanswered. Some, perhaps you, often make friends with far-flung butterfly, moth, bird, snake, orchid, wildflower, big cat or others whose knowledge and breadth of field work ranks them as regional or national or international experts.

I’ve been blessed to have met some, but maybe I’ve not met as many as I’d like to have met. Phil, Rose & Jerry, Mike, Barbara Ann A”H (OBM”), Nancy & John, Angela, Dave, Jerry and Virginia shared and impressed. 2021 beckons, and several new possibilities beckon. For that, I am, even at this point in my life’s journey, very excited.

I met this insect in that forbidden (signs said do not enter at your own risk (risk of flash flooding)) arroyo west of Phoenix, Arizona. I was in my search for butterflies, there just a very limited number of plants in flower, that summer, with the temperature reaching the upper ’90’s, around 10 A.M.. It flew in, was not a butterfly but, was beautiful and of course, I shot away. It fed on nectar, allowed me to shoot it, and soon left.

I expect that I will never know the species name and common name of this animal. I’m uncomfortable ‘researching it online’ for I’m never sure that I’ve correctly determined the species. I do want to have those who are deep in knowledge of such species to help, but I don’t know who they are, it is Arizona, thousands of miles away from the desk in Macon, and . . . .

Jeff

Why Think About Scouring The Enormous West?

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Filed under Native Plants and Flowers, White Tank Mtn. Regional Park, AZ, Wildflowers

Lupine Wildflowers photographed by Jeff Zablow at White Tank Mountains Regional Park, Arizona

Daydreaming about how much of the Americans West I’ve not seen, and will never see. What fraction of Americans have visited wingedbeauty.com over these years? I’m in no rush to calculate that. We know that an incredible number of Americans do not think about flora and fauna, nor do they yearn to see photos of butterflies, wildflowers, moths, trees, mushrooms, bees, flies, mantids, vines and more.

I do. I think about all of those things, and I Love to find them and I Love to share what I find with you, just so long as I am able to share images that are worthy of your timed interest.

What brought this on? This image. A wildflower I met in White Tank Mountains Regional Park, just west of Phoenix, Arizona. Like some (most?) of you, this look brings up a pull on me, to go there, and to go to other Arizona destinations, as for example the Chiracauca Mountains in southeast Arizona that are renowned for species of blue butterflies.

America’s west is bigger than big, and will I have the time, money and get up and go to work it for images that will get your Comments & Likes?

Scouring the America west of the Mississippi . . . a man can dream? No? Peggy? Kenne? Melanie? Sherrie? Mr. Pyle himself? Nancy? The Princess of Whidbey Island? Javier?

Jeff

Sing To An Arizona Arroyo

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Filed under Native Plants and Flowers, White Tank Mtn. Regional Park, AZ

Arroyo Wall photographed by Jeff Zablow at White Tank Mountains Regional Park, Arizona

Early morning at White Tank Mountains Regional Park, west of Phoenix, Arizona. The central desert region of Arizona, in the southwestern USA. Bad Boy Jeff sort of did not honor those signs posted nearby, warning all to not enter the Arroyo, because dry as bones now, a flash storm upstream might/could send a mountain of water your way, without warning.

I’d been to this Arroyo several times, with excellent butterfly finds. Finds I will not forget. What also mesmerized me was the walls of the Arroyo, they drier than bones but . . . .

Beyond those wildflowers, in February bloom, and the other flora and scrub trees on this Arroyo wall, tucked away in the shadows you see, away from the 98 degree Fahrenheit heat that almost took Jeff once, must be amazing desert creatures: lizards, mice, rabbits, scorpions, snakes, spiders, and much unfamiliar to me.

I’d stand there and never know what rested in those cavities, hunkered safely from the daylight and the burning sun. No Ma’am, I will not go there at night, Big Time violating Park regulations, to see what exits those shadows. No Ma’am.

Once, in the early 1980’s, I went with a Manhattan New York friend, who asked if I wanted to see a world famous nightspot, I think its Name was Studio 54 (?) near East 14th Street in Manhattan. We went, and it was the most bizarre place I’ve visited, Ever. I never went back, and the things I saw there, were beyond my belief. That’s what this spot must look like at 1-2 AM!

The things we’ll never see or know . . . .

Jeff