Sunday, September 9, 2012

The Sky Is A Flutter


Variegated Fritillary
In 2008 on the Amazon river, we saw many butterflies puddling along the clay shores.  Fast forward to the future and Southern Arizona during the summer of 2012 and we saw the same exact thing happening here on our roads.  There were so many magical butterflies around us.  This truly has been the year of the butterfly.
I write this post on Saturday after the weekend I took these pictures and wish I could have filmed the activity.  My friend Jen and I pulled the car over and took a closer look......there were literally hundreds of them puddling along the road. Big ones, small ones, blue ones, orange ones......
Sulphur butterflies graced the skies but so did many many others.   If you look around the yellow ones closer, you'll see several other kinds of flutters.
While our exotic Butterfly Magic house is about to open on the first of October, I'd like to recommend Mother Nature's show going on right now.  It's free and won't cost you a penny.  These shots were taken on the Patagonia Sonoita trail.
And where there are butterflies and moths, you'll find loads of caterpillars of all kinds. This Wooly Bear was all over the place on our hikes.  We had to be careful not to step on them.
And now for the good pics.  Incoming!!!!  If you look closely at the shot, you'll notice a fight for the flower.  Do you see the little beetles on the flower? 
Variegated Fritillary
The sky was very very active.  Everywhere you turned we found butterflies and much like the hummingbirds, it was hard to figure out where to point the camera.  These images capture the beauty, but what you don't see or feel during this shoot are the chiggers biting me up and down my legs.  It has been a super wet summer here and life is very active.
In fact on this early morning while I write this post, I'm debating whether or not I should just let myself heal more.  The issue? My other half actually has the day off today.  This may be a day for the Phoenix Aquarium as the rain has caused severe flooding alerts.  Last night a wash filled too quickly and carried a car off.  The husband survived with a broked pelvis as he hung on for life for hours while his wife didn't make it out of the car in time.  Sadly, she was carried away with her vehicle where she drowned. That was here in Tucson by Avra Valley road.  And in Phoenix a technician was caught in the middle of a raging wash.  He went to the top of his heavy utility vehicle and was stranded for hours until he was finally rescued.
So this rain has been serious business with Flood Advisories throughout much of the weekend and into the next couple of days.  It's cloudy outside.  I fed the birds.  Need to do pruning but the mosquitoes are out of this world.  But on this trip last weekend, after our hike here, we went wine tasting in Sonoita.  Not a word Gaelyn:) Does wine count as a snack?:) And I bought a bottle of wine with my friend Jen.  We think we may actually read and crack that bottle open today and just chill instead of run around the grasslands and "desert" we live in today.  But the PROBLEM???  With massive weather systems like this.....
......comes random butterfly making and they sure do like it because it was happening all over.  We have had Giant Swallowtails all over our property laying eggs right now.  The butterflies live for about 2 weeks and then die.  I found one dead on the courtyard and felt really sad because we had been watching this one lay eggs all over my kumquats and tangerine bushes.  It was like Charlotte's Web. Okay but I just got off topic....back to the rainy weather.....
Big storms from the south in Mexico bring cool shorebirds to our desert and today I may end up going to the Sweetlands looking for that Sabine Gull and other tropical birds.  This year in Arizona we've seen the Purple Gallinule and Roseate Bill!!!  Such beautiful rarities from places like Florida and other tropical nations.
My point is, if I even have one, that as much as I'd like to sit on my duff and do nothing, there is so much out there right now to be seen that if I did sit here all day, I'd be missing out and feel guilty because this isn't going to last forever as it is like a treasure grove of discoveries.  How's that for a run on sentence?
The desert is dangerous, exciting and full of wonder......and full of bugs right now.  This is the high time to watch butterflies here.  We have so many in Southern Arizona.  So if you come to visit during September, remember your bug spray and get ready for some incredible finds. 

29 comments:

  1. Hello Chris

    nice info and very good pictures.....i like it .

    wish you a very nice sunday,

    Greetings from Holland, Joop

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  2. Loved this post. What you've described is the way it is in Texas all the time - bugs, bugs, bugs, itch, itch, itch! At least in Deep East Texas where I live where it's hot, muggy, wet, clammy, sweaty almost every day from May through September!

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  3. great pictures! I had to do a double take on the shadows in your second picture -- where did the second butterfly go? Great shot

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    1. Your guess is good as mine:) When I was looking at the shot, I couldn't find the second butterfly.

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  4. These scenes of Butterflies are familiar to your Amazon post link you put on my comments over at "Earth's Internet".

    Have you ever seen the native Southern Arizona Thick Billed Parrot do this or any other Parrots in South America who have a need for eating clay ? These parrots eat things that would give most humans sour stomach, including them if they didn't take in the clay to absorb the acids and tannins present in their foods.

    A lot of Health food companies offer Bentonite Clay products for humans to do the same thing for their colons.

    Best Arizona Butterfly experience I had was in a small meadow up in Ramsey Canyon with my son.

    Best Butterfly Exhibit I've been to is San Diego Safari Park

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    1. Yes, we sure did! That was so much fun. In fact, we went to watch them taking in the clay super early in the morning and while we were waiting for them to come, we sat in a hideout off the river watching the sun come up. And that's how we caught that shot of the moisture coming out from the rain forest. Unfortuneatly, I did not have a great camera at the time to get nice parrot shots. Not anymore. I'll be ready for our next big one:)

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  5. Oh wow, all the butterflies are cool. What a pretty sight to see. I really like how you can catch the butterflies in flight. I had tried and never managed to get a decent photo. I really love the sulfur colors. Just beautiful! The flooding sounds awful, how much longer do the monsoon rains last? Happy Sunday!

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  6. Beautiful photos Chris. Wonderful to see so many butterflies - its been a poor year over here for them. I love the little beetles on the one photo! Take care in those floods and hope your bites heal soon.

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  7. Oh the wonderful, relief of the summer heat with the monsoon season!! I remember it so well. And always enjoyed the lightning and thunder along with the washes filling up to become torrents!!

    Love your butterflies AND enjoyed your coyote photos below in the previous post. So many times I'd walk the desert by Sabino Canyon and in our 'own backyard' along Thornydale and Cotaro Farms....seeing these...it was a treat.

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  8. So magical, beautiful and exciting. Thanks for these lovely shots.

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  9. Fantastic shots, Chris! This sure is turning out to be a great year for butterfly watching.

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  10. It is impossible to not be completely fascinated and totally love . . . The Butterfly . . . and The Caterpillar before it. :)

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  11. I can sympathise with all that rain Chris, our summer was a real washout :-(

    All those flutters must have been some sight!

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  12. Wonderful shots Chris, I love butterflies.

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  13. the flash flooding dangers sound terrible. the butterflies are beautiful, though. i like the shots where you can see their shadows on the ground as they fly over. :)

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  14. I love all the beautiful butterflies AND their shadows Chris, fab images.. the poor plant in your 6th shot doesn't stand much of a chance with the butterflies and beetles fighting over it, it already looks pretty devastated. We have so many of the black hairy caterpillars around just now also. So sad to hear about the flood tragedies..it's so good to get the rain, but when it comes down in torrents it's a different matter.

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  15. That must have been so cool, seeing so many! I love your second shot with the shadows. Such an interesting butterfly. I don't think we have those here - beautiful colors!

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  16. Love your first shot, the wings are lit up like stained glass! It's strange to see those butterflies on the ground, they look like sailboats bobbing on the water. In our case winter is around the corner and in no time everything will be under a blanket of snow so I catch my pictures while I can.

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  17. You got some absolutely beautiful shots! What fun and free...can't get any better than that. What fun to have so many fun choices to do with your day...a delicious dilemma. Went to an auction yesterday in Congress Junction (had a lot of fun!)but we passed several washes where the roads were washed away. The desert can be so beautiful, but dangerous.

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  18. What a beautiful sight all these butterflies are! Great photos! I hear ya on the mosquitoes...we are always thankful for the rain, but with it comes even more bloodsuckers.

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  19. The second photo is very interesting with the shadows and all, it might be a Southern Dogface. The orange butterflies are Variegated Fritillaries, except the last one is a Mexican Frittilary.

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  20. Always so much beauty to discover! Great photos of these brief but lovely butterflies!

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  21. Amazing, and beautiful. Except for this spring when the Red Admirals migrated through in record numbers, butterflies have been troublingly scarce in our area. Glad to see they're thriving in other places.

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  22. How wonderful! You got to see some absolutely lovely butterflies.

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  23. Seeing butterflies in the desert is extra special. One so fragile. One so harsh. Beautiful photos - thank you.

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  24. A really colourful blog. I enjoyed seeing your butterflies.

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  25. The good thing about internet is that we can see the world without having to travel at all! Love to read your blog and see the wildlife in your region too.

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  26. All these butterflies are absolutely amazing. I love their shadows in the shots. So share the wine, please. Or did you and Kathie drink it all?

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    1. :)I didn't want to give her a bad first impression. Plus wining and birding......I think we'd miss half the birds out there. That was a such a fun day yesterday. 2 lifers for me!

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