fleeing butterflies | Winged Beauty Butterflies

Common Wood Nymph butterfly on a leaf photographed by Jeff Zablow at Raccoon Creek State Park, PA

I’ve been on the lookout for some 27 years or so for Wood Nymph Butterflies with bold, expansive yellow fields surrounding baby blue ‘eyes.’ Several times I’ve seen incredibly beautiful ones, only to have them flee, as the best of them all did at Raystown Lake in central Pennsylvania, w/o me coping a single image of it.

Frank Sinatra, the famous Frank Sinatra made famous the moniker “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” and well, my own blue eyes did on occasion work well for me, truth be told.

This Common Wood Nymph, met at Raccoon Creek State Park in southwestern Pennsylvania, about rates that venerable title, ‘Ol Blue Eyes, don’y you agree. An 8-hour drive from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York.

Jeff

Eyed Satyr Butterfly, photographed by Jeff Zablow at Jamestown Audubon Center, NY

Barbara Ann (A”H) and I were at Clay Pond Preserve in Frewsburg, New York, near Jamestown. It was a damp, humid morning, with the sun promising to return within the hour. It was early, as we waded through the 2-foot tall pond-edge grasses and sedges. As we moved, butterflies rose up from here and there, fleeing. There were more butterflies being rustled up than I would have expected. That reassured me that on that my second trip to Clay Pond, it remained a rich, healthy wetland destination.

I noticed this form in the grass ahead, and carefully making my approach, I kneeled down to get a better look, and this is what I saw, an Eyed Brown Butterfly (Satyroydes eurydice). The available light was limited, the air was moisture saturate, and the sky remain cloudy.

Almost like those TV shows where the cops are staking out a house, before sunrise or after sunset.

Jeff