I did a "best of" the hummingbirds awhile back and I think the primary motivation for that may have been the same as today's. There just wasn't anything happening on my walk. It was very windy with Santa Anas blowing gusts up to 50 mph. It has also been one of the driest years in over a century. What this adds up to, unfortunately, is a high probability for fires. What I experienced out of it was not much in the way of photo ops. No birds or insects and we're at the tail end of dry weather wreaking havoc on plant life.
Over the past week I've only seen maybe two or three butterflies from my office window so that got me thinking why not a best of butterflies walk report. It's going to be a bit skimpy on variety I'm afraid to say. There just isn't the kind of butterfly activity there used to be in this valley but here goes.
In no particular order and quite honestly without a whole lot of effort going into sorting through images...
Monarch caterpillar (Danaus plexippus)
Adult Monarch on Narrow-leafed milkweed, along with a lot of milkweed aphids, aka oleander aphids.
Cabbage White (Pieris-rapae) on lamb's ear.
Marine blue (Leptotes marina) on Callistemon.
Cloudless Sulphur (Phoebis sennae) on red mountain sage.
Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) on lantana.
Another Cabbage White, this one on manzanita.
Male Grass Skipper on lantana.
Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae), this one back in April. One of the 1st butterflies I saw and chased down this year.
Another close up, Grass Skipper on lantana. It's hard to get this close to a butterfly.
Butterfly in a bubble, CG. This is an illustration for a children's story I "wrote" in 2009. Without giving away the entire story I will tell you the bubble is actually a crystal ball.
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