wetland | Winged Beauty Butterflies

Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly, photographed by Jeff Zablow at Jamestown Audubon Center in New York

The timing was perfect. There were several Baltimore checkerspot butterflies here and there in this wetland, part of the Jamestown (NY) Audubon Center’s extensive reserve. All looked fresh and just so pretty to look at. I really wanted image of Baltimores, and here was my opportunity.

So I stepped (Shhh!) off trail to shoot that one, w/o good result. This other one, flew before I could set up, Oh that’s a nice one, vamoose!, and that is how it went. To do what we do, you cannot give up, and I kept at it.

Checkerspots are limited here in the northeast, and we are Blessed to have these beauts. Their hostplants are Turtlehead, a native wetland wild flowering plant.

The thing about Baltimores is that when you find them, they bedazzle you, and you have to remember why you came there in the first place, to capture the handsome features of these eye-candy lookers.

Jeff

Years ago, at Raystown Lake in Central Pennsylvania, I saw Common Wood Nymph butterflies whose blue centered eye-spots dazzled me. I worked that habitat for a single day, and never forgot how those eye-spots evoked memories of fine gems, that I’d seen in Christies’, Sotheby’s and Dole’s magnificent jewelry auction galleries in New York.

Since then, I’ve sought to find comparable Common Wood Nymphs. Little success there.

This year I visited Clay Pond, a New York State conserved wetland. Not the New York metropolitan area that I came to have a love/hate relationship with, but Western New York, green and pristine. High grasses surrounded the Pond, and there were lots of butterflies. Seeing them was difficult, because their flights were short, quickly descending down into the tightly set grasses and sedges.

This one showed itself, then went into the above, fly up, descend to hide, flee my approach through the grass (which must have been easily detected). After repeated escapes from me, it descended, and stayed, hiding and resting.

As I closed in, Bazoom! It was gorgeous. Those eye-spots, baby blue, and circled by light orange rings, all against a background of Stetson hat chocolate brown. It shot, shot,shot. Waited for my slides to be returned from Dwayne’s Photo, and Yippee Eye Ay, Yippee Eye Oh!! A satyr image, Good enough to share.

Jeff