Tag Archives: wildflowers

Large Salmon Arab Butterfly in the Israeli HolyLand, near the Mediterranean Coast

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Filed under Binyamina, Israel, Salmon Arab

Large Salmon Arab Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at Binyamina, Israel

I’ve scoured Glassberg’s A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America and I cannot find an North American butterfly that is similar to this Large Salmon Arab Butterfly. Where’d I meet this eye-pleasing yellow butterfly? I was working the dirt roads that cut through agricultural fields in Binyamina in central Israel, not to far from the Mediterranean coast. This wildflower grows along many such roads, and butterflies visit it much.

I love photographing butterflies in the HolyLand. They have walked the same trails, ancient many, as I have, seen the same butterflies as I have. I have little doubt that they stopped and marveled at the same butterflies as I have. That they were pleased as I’ve been at G-d’s beautiful winged beauties.

Jeff

Me & Them – Looking Back?

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Filed under Raccoon Creek State Park, PA

Pittsburgh South Vo-Tech public school field trip participants - May 2004, photographed by Jeff Zablow in Raccoon Creek State Park, PA

Sometimes we look back, sometimes fondly. Here, I’m looking back to a Wetlands Study field trip we took, was it in 1998? What memories this releases. I’m here, taking this photo, and this was the one and only time we had another high school teacher along, she in the middle row at the right.

For almost everyone in this pic, Raccoon Creek State Park in southwestern Pennsylvania was their first time out of the city of Pittsburgh, and for most, their first experience in a wilderness. They were my Biology students at South Vo-Tech High School, on Pittsburgh’s Southside.

I tell you I look and look at this pic, and I smile, smile much. Who among them will ever forget this trip into a wonderland they’d never known before? Which of them will take their kids, whom I expect they now love, to such sylvan, magical places, to wonder at wildflowers, trees, butterflies, frogs, lizards, weasels, great blue herons, red-wing blackbirds, millipedes and Oh so much more?

I feel good, like I knew that I would!

Jeff

Now? Still One Of My Favorite Images

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Filed under Maniola Telmessia, Mt. Meron, Israel

Maniola Telmessia (female) photographed by Jeff Zablow at Mt. Meron, Israel

I was on Mt. Meron in the Upper Galilee region of the HolyLand (Israel). Wasn’t my first visit to the mountain, and once again, I was working that same trail, not far from the mountain’s peak. Above me, a top Secret IDF military base, ahead of me, wildflowers and butterflies in abundance.

I’m quick to form likes, and I’d already decided that I Love a butterfly, names Maniola Telemessia. Like ‘Love,’ this butterfly was hard to get, so to speak. It was swift, and they did not tolerate my approach. Me? I don’t easily give up, not when ‘Love’ is real. There won’t ever be a Jeff’s biography, but when I am zonked by ‘Love,’ look out.

After much furtive (near useless/unproductive) following of Maniola Telemessia, I spotted this one, nectaring on a tiny, yet armed with bristles, plant. You know I shoot Macro- and Fuji Velvia film, requiring I make a patent-pending, ultra-slow approach. As I was doing it, she moved a bit, and her left forewing was now out of the shade and in the sun! I shot away, Pop! PoP! Pop!

Heere’s an image that will always be one of my favorites, of the perhaps 100,000. It just sends me to the land of Bliss!

Jeff

Twin-Spot Skipper How Do You Do

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Filed under Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, GA, Skipper

Twin-spot Skipper Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, GA

We made the brief acquaintance of this “U” for Uncommon (Glassberg, A Swift Guide to Butterflies) Twin-Spot Skipper in Laura’s Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge. Yes it was a rush to see a seldom seen and very fresh skipper butterfly, perhaps the 3rd I’d ever seen. My move to Georgia continues to reward me with these kinds of thrilling moments, seeing butterflies that are seldom seen by even the most avid butterfly seekers.

Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge? Highly recommended. It is the home to so many much sough butterflies, wildflowers, botany, birds of wetlands and dry, insects, big alligators and baby alligators, snakes and more and more.

Fortunate you are when one such as Laura takes the time to urge you to head out to a destination, one that she knows is full of G-d’s creations, especially for me, butterflies.

Jeff

Ten (10) Years of TomFoolery

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Filed under Audubon Community Nature Center, Jamestown, NY, Checkerspot, Eatonton, GA, Pearly-Eye, Raccoon Creek State Park, PA, Swallowtail
Northern Pearly Eye Butterfly, photographed by Jeff Zablow at Raccoon Creek State Park in Pennsylvania

Northern Pearly Eye butterfly

 

Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly, photographed by Jeff Zablow at the Jamestown Audubon Center in Jamestown, NY.

Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly

 

Male Black Swallowtail Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow in the Briar Patch Habitat in Eatonton, GA

Me? I’ve taught high school Biology to thousands of young Americans, in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am pleased with the respect and admiration that my students afforded me. I retired in 2006, to become the caregiver for Frieda A”H. I lost that job, when she passed in January 2008.

I’ve been in the bushes as much as possible, for these last 25 years. I search for and photograph butterflies. This wingedbeauty.com that you’re reading here is the product of my love and fascination with butterflies & wildflowers.

I have watched the health and well being of our land become taken over by ‘naturalists’ who claim 1) that they must protect our land for all of us and 2) lecture and alarm us that our pristine habitat will soon be destroyed by “Global Warming.” I have watched as they chastise us for the coming annihilation of our fauna and flora, and for the coming destruction of all that is wild and loved,.

It seems that to be an academic today, you must join the ranks of the alarmists. You must declare that butterflies, birds, wildflowers, dragonflies, wasps, moths and macro- animals are all soon to leave us.

All not so. I spend hundreds/thousands of hours in the bush, seeking and searching for butterflies, and I can Thankfully report that they are well, normal and unchanged, with an excellent future. There is no Global Warming and there will be none in the future. G-d is in control and has been since the beginning of time.

True it is, that if the relations of the loudest Global Warming supporters would stop developing valuable habitat, usually the home of endangered butterflies and living things, if they would stop developing the choicest sites along our oceans, lakes and rivers . . . if they would stop overdeveloping California, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Washington State, Arizona, Florida, New Mexico and more, our children and grandchildren would so benefit, and species would not continue disappearing.

There is no Global Warming. These 3 American butterflies attest to that.

Jeff