When you’re out in the field as much as some of us are, my thoughts are dominated by “Can I find this one, will my search for that one be rewarded?” The Lower Rio Grande Valley was just that, every step, each turned corner, frought with excitement. Reminds me of the time when poor as dirt Jeff worked as a messenger in NYNY (to pay to eat while in college) and was given a package to deliver to the Radio City Music Hall dressing room, to one of the Rockettes. So I’m 19 years old, and when I get to the dressing room with the package, the guy watching the door tells me to just take it right in, and I look at him and think (((WHAT!!!)). So I go in with the package, and truth be told, I could barely breathe what with the . . . Given a choice, I’d still choose the RCMHall dressing room over the National Butterfly Center, but Oh! how similar they were to me.

With all this seeking/searching/scoping and scanning habitats for butterflies, rare, protected, short of flight butterflies, it often strikes me that we sure overlook lots of ‘common’ species. Photographing in the Butterflies & Blooms Briar Patch Habitat I in Eatonton, Georgia, the extensive beds of Senna produced squadrons of these Cloudless Sulphur butterflies.

Each day from June to October, these gorgeous, big yellow butterflies surround you and you begin to ignore their presence. When I searched the Media Library of wingedbeauty.com, I stopped here, for it struck me, made me consider how we rush past these beauts, with their large white as milk spots, and almost never choose them to share with you. Why hesitate to share? For fear that you, our audience will recoil, thinking Oh yeah, and discount them on sight, as though she’s the Betty, the girl in the Archie comic book series, living next door to Archie, but might as well be invisible to the catchable red headed hero.

Jeff