wingedbeauty.com Approaches April 30, 2021

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Filed under Locations for Butterflies

 

Earring Series - Jeff with Black Swallowtail Earrings (Best shot), at "Butterflies and Blooms in the Briar Patch," Eatonton, GA

This is the shot with the Eastern Black Swallowtails fully on my right ear.

I have loved sharing wingedbeauty.com with you for more than 10 years. It has been my pleasure to bring images of butterflies to you. Images of wildflowers to you. Share images of Petra, now days away from her 11th birthday, and beginning to experience older age.

I Thank Carolyn Speranza for these 10 years of her work to make this the Beautiful, Visually Inviting blog that it is. I openly Thank Carolyn for her tech expertise, and ask her Forgiveness for my occasional reluctance and stubbornness, when change beckons.

It has been my Pleasure to have you, Esthete that You are, come and see and I hope Enjoy the Beauty and Elegance and Incredible Fortitude of the butterflies of the U.S.A., Canada and Israel. That You have been able to savor the butterflies of the HolyLand, of my Beloved Israel, has so Pleased Me. That I’ve not been able to convince You to visit that Blessed Land, well that’s OK. Your Love of it suffices.

I am fine, Thank G-d in Good Health. It has been Incredible, and it may well be that wingedbeauty.com is the Only Blog of its kind. If so, I Love that Idea.

I Thank You. I Appreciate you. You have enriched me, much.

I will continue to post here in the next handful of days, and wingedbeauty.com will end on April 30, 2021.

Wow! One More Time: Thank You Carolyn, You Are A Great Talent and I’d not have been able to have done what we’ve done without You.

Jeff

PS, I will continue to post images on Facebook and Instagram. I will continue looking for and enjoying . . . Butterflies & Flowers. Good?

Northern Metalmark Jackpot!

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Filed under Butterfly Types, Lynx Prairie Reserve, Adams County, OH, Metalmark

Northern Metalmark Butterfly at rest photographed by Jeff Zablow at Lynx Prairie, OH

I was excited to read his Facebook post yesterday. He shared an image of a Northern Metalmark Butterfly. He wrote that it was some worn and faded, But, he, a well known, knowledgeable butterfly seeker, noted that Northern Metalmarks are imperiled, difficult to find, and that their future is uncertain.

I read his shared information with a combination of chagrin and excitement. Excitement because I’ve posted several times of my visit to that meadow in Lynx Prairie Preserve, after I’d become separated from my friends, and the Amazing discovery that I’d made. My first sighting of Northern Metalmark Butterflies, and an Unbelievable 50 or more of them, all fresh, newly closed and What A Rush that gave me!

G-d has brought me through much, this lifetime, from those streets of Brooklyn all the way to this day. That I am well and out there, is appreciated, much. That I found, just me myself and I, a vibrant flight of a rare, steadily disappearing Metalmark Butterfly, that sunny day in Adams County, Ohio, is a tribute to my friend who enabled me to join that group, to be guided to Lynx Prairie, and to stand there, and know that I had seen something that few can ever see. I will always be indebted to Barbara Ann Case A”H, a real friend and an expert naturalist.

Jeff

Will Her Monarch Caterpillar Descendants Be Visiting Your Milkweed this Year?

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Filed under Eatonton, GA, Monarch

Monarch Butterfly, photographed by Jeff Zablow at Raccoon Creek State Park in Pennsylvania

She’s depositing eggs on this Milkweed leaf. Most of us know that the numbers of Monarch butterflies seen these last years is low, very low. Low enough to deeply concern many of us. Why?

Why have the numbers of Monarch butterflies collapsed? The conifer forests that they visit wintertime, in the mountains of central Mexico, continue to be logged by outlaw lumbermen. This has greatly reduced the wintering habitat for Monarchs. Additional loss of these fir trees will further decimate populations. Here in the U.S.A. loss of habitat has taken its toll, and the use of toxics for agriculture and home gardening/’bugs’ too jeopardizes Monarchs.

What do I think? There should be a national effort to save this American favorite. The U.S. government should do this, for nearly every American child learns of Monarchs in grade school, and most carry that knowledge and the accompanying fondness for Monarchs all the years of their lives.

What can You do to help? Plant Milkweed plants in your garden. Garden small or garden large, plant milkweed where you have sun and moist soil. Plant milkweed in pots where feasible. Your planted and your potted milkweed are hostplants that nourish Monarch caterpillars. Their life cycle, which you and ‘Miss McGillicudy’ probables studied back in Grade 3, is fascinating and calming and reassuring in these unique times.

Suggestion: Don’t purchase your milkweed in Big Box stores. Purchase them more carefully, at local native nurseries (nurseries that stock plants native to your state) or online, from nurseries offering natives. A little more effort . . . But alot more reward.

Me? I see a Monarch, and I’m in love. Honest.

Jeff

I Finally Saw this Special Butterfly at Fort Indiantown Gap near Harrisburg Pennsylvania

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Filed under Fort Indiantown Gap, PA, Fritillary

Full dorsal view of Regal Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow in Fort Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, PA

Wanted to meet the elegant regal Fritillary Butterfly, and I waited years and year for the opportunity. When I finally first saw this special butterfly, at Ft. Indiantown Gap near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I was moved, ecstatic and moved. Yes! It was as beautiful and I had anticipated it would be.

This male was happily nectaring on Butterfly Weed, and tolerated my approach. He evoked such rich memories. When I was a kid in Brooklyn, New York, I used to slip away from those street games, and head into the undeveloped ‘lots’ nearby. We lived on the edge of oncoming development, and in those 1940’s lots I found cottontail rabbits, butterflies and black widow spiders.

I learned some years ago that George Washington’s men marched through my very neighborhood, on their way to battle the British. They probably could have seen Regal Fritillaries. I never saw them there, in East Flatbush, for they were extirpated (gone) long before I arrived. Development and new neighbors are great, but when they come, butterflies . . . .

My mind at this moment? The lyrics of ‘When You Wish Upon A Star‘ sing When you wish upon a star, Your dreams come true (Walt Disney Music Co).

Never met most famous folks, but my dream did come true, for I met and photo’d the extraordinary Regal Fritillary Butterflies.

Jeff

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