Butterfly

Tasteyg, your photography just gets better and better.
Wow.

OKAY okay I'm dying here!! Come little butterfly, come visit auntie polly!

Thanks for the compliment Terratoonie. I have to thank my model. These little guys stick around for the longest time.
Has it made it there yet, Auntie Polly? I sent this one over, along with some cousins, lol. I hope they make it to your garden soon. I know how you feel Polly...the one I'm really after, the swallowtail...it just flies by to tease me. I want that picture so badly! When I saw Flcrazy's I was a little green with envy :)

You should look at my swallowtail. I have a couple, they just sit there, for ever.

MGM- Your luky! I saw your swallowtail, it's beautiful.

Lol...You give me your camera knowledge on taking great close-ups and I'll give you my swallowtails...is it a deal ?!

I would seetle for just the camera.

LOL. To tell you the truth Flcrazy, I think that it has a lot more to do with my camera than knowledge... A steady hand or tripod is very important to get a crisp clean shot. Lighting is also important. Morning light is good, by the afternoon it's almost too bright. I try to use the specified setting for what I'm shooting, you know macro, portrait, lanscape, action etc. Like I've said before I take a lot of shots, hoping one will be "golden". Another trick is to crop your photos and that brings the eye even closer, but they have to be pretty crisp (focused) to do that. Okay, I've kept up my part of the bargain... now where are my butterflies! hehe :)

Man.... I can't believe you shared all your secrets, well, I'm sure you're still holding your ace...lol. You called my bluff Tasteyg... you may be getting a cocoon in the mail... that's as good as I can do. hahaha. Don't get mad if next year you have hundreds of praying mantis's running out of it instead of a beautiful swallowtail...I've never been good at identifing cocoons..lol.

Glad to share Flcrazy. They're not secrets really. What do they say..."practice makes perfect." Not that I'm perfect, by no means. That's my ace; I guess, lots of photos of the same shot and then weed out the lousy ones. No cocoons, that's okay :) lol

Beautiful Tasteyg, you can just see the turquiose colouring on the underside of the top wing, it's the Striped Hairstreak again! Our Hairstreaks, are much smaller and daintier.

Thanks again Janey :)

the thing about the mantis' ... I found 2 cocoons and turned out that like 50 mantis' came out instead of a beautiful butterfly. It was amazing. Then my mother drowned them.

Oh, no Michael! What a shame. Yes it's the Grey Hairstreak Tasteyg, aren't they all similar!

Janey- There are a quite a lot of them that look extremely similar! Thanks so much for leading me to the butterfly site :)
Michael- That's is a shame that your mother drowned them :( I believe that most gardeners welcome them (praying mantis) to their gardens; because they will eat garden pests, therefore reducing the need for pesticides. They actually sell the mantis cocoons at our local nurseries, just for that purpose. Plus, you could have photographed them and shared them with us. When ever I find something interesting like that in my garden, I take it into the classroom to share it with the children. They love it! Fascinating and educational :) We have an oak tree in our play yard at the school and the kids like to break them open or collect them. The kids sometimes give the acorns to me and I'll put them in my pocket. I accidentally brought some home one time. I put them a little cup. I noticed that there were little holes in the acorn...then later I noticed that there were little larvae ( looked it up and they turned out to be acorn moth larvae) in the cup. I put them in a container and brought them back to the classroom w/ the acorns. They later turned into moths. I've also brought in katydid eggs (go here to see a pic: http://www.ppdl.purdue.edu/PPDL/weeklypics/5-28-07.html) that I found on a stick in the garden. We watched them hatch and released them. I also brought in the large manduca caterpillar (found on one of our tomato plants) and we witnessed the life-cycle.

I didn't think of taking a picture of them. I wasn't on this site yet. This was back in May maybe June. I kept them on the sticks, of course, and put them in a jar. I came home one day and there was baby prayin mantis' all over the jar. It was amazing. Come home the next day and there's an inch of water at the bottom. My mother didn't have a good excuse for it. I found about half the baby mantis' in the water. With in a week later they were all dead. I was lucky enough to pull one of the cocoons out with about 7 mantis' on it and brought it to my environmental Science teacher at the high school.
Wow, the Manduca is a huge caterpillar, I've found one once. I thought the acorn moths were ugly so I never took pictures of them.