Celebrating Butterflies – Part 1

Even though I have been volunteering at the Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit, I don’t take pictures of butterflies every time I am there (too busy when I am in my ‘Flight Attendant’ role). Most of the pictures of butterflies I’m taking these days are themed. For example – blue morphos are a challenge to photograph because they usually fold their wings when they sit. Last week – one of the expert volunteers tickled one with the brush…and it opened its wings for a few second…repeatedly… until everyone took a picture. Since the color is reflective/physical, the direction of the light is important. Looking at the butterfly vertically – the blue looks like a blue foil.

The easiest picture of the blue morpho is the underside of the wings…and there is something to note in a zoomed image: the ‘eyes’ have some salmon scales in them!

I took several images of one that happened to open its wings and stay still of a few minutes. This butterfly was horizontal and the blue color looks quite different with a deeper blue toward the top of the wing. Also notice the red marks in the black frame at the bottom of the wing. The blue scales powder into the black frame. The last picture of this series is the head of the butterfly. Note the labial palpi – the small projections that curve up and around the eyes. They are sensory structures but may also protect the proboscis and/or act to protect the surface of the eyes.

The slide show below shows a butterfly that was moving its labial palpi. It looked to me like the insect was rubbing them over part of the eye.

Here are few more images that show labial palpi. They are not all the same looking. Not the red proboscis that is tightly coiled (between the palpi) in the last image!