Memorial Day Weekend Butterflies

This weekend was just chock full of wild animal and plant encounters. The first of which was Saturday, when we got to spend time with a friend of mine who is a lepidoptery (butterfly and moth) fanatic. We pulled out our butterfly nets:

And got lucky!

That's him! My lepidopterist friend :)

We caught more butterflies in the sunlight as opposed to the shade, and near flowers especially. They are trickier than they look, we saw many more butterflies than we were able to catch. My favorite was the spring azure, which is tiny and baby blue in color.

Here are some pictures of a tiger swallowtail we caught. Note that my friend, as a lepidopterist's daughter, has been trained in how to hold butterflies without hurting them. No butterflies were harmed in the making of this post!

 See the lovely tail and stripes on each wing! If you look closely you

can see its long tongue (proboscis) is curled near its head

When we let the butterfly go it flew off really quickly and very high in the air. Looking at how it flies, we're lucky we caught it at all!