Actually, I took a lot more pictures than that, but I figured there were probably only so many photos of butterfly fucking you guys would want to see. I had lots of opportunity to snap away, though, because butterflies definitely have what you'd call stamina. I went back out again an hour later, and they were still at it. In fact, I was beginning to worry that there might have been some kind of problem and maybe they'd gotten stuck, but, no this paper I found online (warning: PDF) assured me that butterflies can spend up to three hours in the act, and that larger ones take longer than smaller ones. Well, these were certainly the biggest butterflies I've ever seen around here, so I guess they were just being normal.
Anybody know exactly what kind of butterflies these are, by the way? I have an insect identification guide, but I'm not sure I've ever been able to correctly identify a single bug from it. These look a lot like the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail picture, but I think I might be a smidge far west for those.
Do you think that's what it looks like when fairies do it? Maybe with more sparkles :)
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with your id, we've always just called them Swallowtails here.
-Chelsi
Possibly it depends on the species of fairy. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd I think there are a lot of different kinds of swallowtail, but how many of them live here, I don't know.