a lifer | Winged Beauty Butterflies

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

Back when I was involved in the management of apartment buildings in New York, New York (AKA Manhattan), we’d occasionally meet for lunch near my office. Sometimes, I have to go stop into my real estate lawyer’s office in the very Art Deco Fuller Building at East 57th Street and Madison Avenue. Other times, we’d enjoy lunch and walk over to Christie’s, the world famous auction gallery, also nearby (fine art, porcelains, jewelry).

She would always stop to enjoy the East 57th Street windows of Dell Webb. Their jewelry was not her style, but we always agreed that it was very beautiful.

Mesmerized by this Malachite butterfly last late-December 2017, it spent much time resting in this ravine trail at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas. Frieda A”H (OBM) passed in 2008, how she would have so enjoyed this magnificent butterfly, deemed “U” for Uncommon all Year in southern Texas (Glassberg, A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America).

This 2019 I have plans for a re-visit to the National Butterfly Center near the border wall, a return trip to the Florida Panhandle, a drive to northwestern Alabama and several other trips to find and shoot butterflies.

Each and every time I locate a butterfly that is new to me, I enjoy a mind flow of exciting thoughts. Butterflies flee or linger, either way, when they are no longer seen, I hike on, totally spiked by what I’d just seen. My thinking inevitably is that I am Blessed to be among the so very few who have seen what I had just seen. I remember those moments/minutes . . . forever.

What are you thinking when you see a super fresh butterfly or a ‘Lifer’ for you?

Jeff

Hello to another butterfly I met on the northern slope of Mt. Meron. The Upper Galilee region of Israel was all new to me in June 2013. Butterflies were everywhere. Some were known to me. This species was a lifer, the first I’d ever seen and identified of this species. Boing! Camera loaded (film), sun at my back, zero wind, now make a careful approach…risky because I’d never seen this one before, and if it flees, I may not see it …. Followed my Technique (see Technique feature at the top of your screen)…Good.

Our image here causes me to make this determination, Hyponephele lupinus c.. The ventral wing surface is mottled brown, with abundant dotting. The hindwing has that jagged pattern running through its center. The hindwing edges are also jagged. There is a tiny peek of the orangish-brown coloring of the center of the ventral forewing. The head is brownish as are the antennae. Much thanks to Dubi Benyamini’s A Field Guide To The Butterflies of Israel (Keter Publishing, 2002) for helping me identify this butterfly. They fly from May to June, then are not seen until August and fly into September. Where? Jerusalem and immediately north of Jerusalem, and a corridor at the north of Israel, roughly from Mt. Meron to Mt. Hermon. They are Satyrs. I Love satyrs.

What do I wish? I wish that I had someone with me that, and other Whoopee! mornings, someone who would get me a photograph of ME! each time I discovered a new butterfly species, new to Jeffrey. New to me. What that moment must look like. Me, flush and satisfied. Me, setting out to uncover more new, more exciting, more…to share with You!

Jeff