Blue Morpho Butterflies

One of the most popular butterflies to photograph in Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy  exhibit is the blue morpho. They flutter around within the conservatory. They feed on the rotten fruit.

The underside of their wings seems drab at first (and it is drab compared to the other side of the wing) but with magnification the pattern and colors are quite interesting. The palpi (the bristly structures that are between the eyes) have an orange stripe although the palpi seem to be easily broken off and there is orange along the outer edge of the wing. The eye spots are at least 3 colors.

They seem to like to look to the outside through the windows of the conservatory. Their wings are sometimes so battered that one can see the blue color where part of wing has broken away.

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They sometimes like to rest on the floor – always a dangerous place for butterflies with people not always looking where they step. Most of the time they are resting with their wings closed.

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Then – the serendipity event happens – the blue morpho opens its wings and stays where it is long enough to be photographed! The color is made my physical means rather than pigment…and changes with the incidence of light. Do you see that sometimes the blue looks pink? This is the first time I was able to capture an image of the changeable color of the blue morpho.

Clearwing Butterfly

Some butterflies do not have scales…or have very few of them. There are a few specimens in Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit and I’m always thrilled to see them. I rarely spot them on my own and most of the time I’m busy with my volunteer job as a ‘flight attendant’ so I can’t take pictures. Recently I was walking around the exhibit – not volunteering – and I had my camera and a tripod. There was a school group visiting the exhibit and they’d spotted a clearwing!

The butterfly was focused on breakfast of nectar from some white flowers (the proboscis was not rolled up between flowers….the insect was hungry!) so was staying put long enough for pictures.

The ribs that provide the structure for the wings are more obvious when the wing is clear. In the case of this butterfly they are a metallic copper color. Sometime that color is reflected in the thin membrane that is the wing.

There do appear to be a few scales on this time of clearwing – on the upper edge of the wing…some white and copper color.

Seeing a clearwing is one of the things that makes a walk in the exhibit special.

Wings of Fancy – 1st shift

I had my first shift for this season’s Wings of Fancy shift at Brookside Gardens earlier this week. The exhibit is opening an hour earlier this year to take advantage of the morning temperatures. Visitors will appreciate that during the summer. Like last year – I took a short walk around the gardens before heading into the conservatory. The gardens are lush even with the variability of rain and temperatures so far this spring.

The azaleas are blooming but I decided to walk through the are where the tulips are blooming….lots of color on a spring morning. I walked fast because it was chilly at 8:30 AM (in the 40s and breezy).

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I was in the conservatory waiting for the first visitors and decided to take a few pictures. I was surprise what I was able to do in 10-15 minutes! My theme was heads – eyes, antennae, proboscis, and papillae. I’m sure they’ll be many other butterfly pictures this season (the exhibit runs until September 16), but I’m pleased with my first batch. Hopefully a reflection of the happy place the exhibit creates comes through too!

Ready for Butterflies

Last week, I went to the hour-long class for volunteers for Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy. It was a refresher about how to handle the containment of the butterflies in the conservatory and the stations within the exhibit. The exhibit opens on April 18th and opens one hour earlier than it did last year – taking advantage of the cooler temperatures in the morning during the hot summer. The exhibit was under construction during our training, but it was already obvious that Wings of Fancy is going to be as wonderful as it has been in past years.

As I walked out to the parking lot, I noticed that the skunk cabbage blooms are finished, and the green leaves are all around the bald cypress…which is still bald.

There were grackles all through the woods near the parking lot…making a lot of noise on the spring day. They use their whole body to make their call!

Wings of Fancy Volunteering Retrospective

I enjoyed volunteering at Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit. The seasonal exhibit ended on September 17th and I’m missing it this week; I’m already keen on volunteering when the 2018 exhibit starts next April. I started later this year because I only decided to volunteer for in in May…but even so – I managed 26 shifts during the summer months and the first weeks of September. I’ve posted about the earlier shift previously…but am including the last 7 (all in September) in this post.

Shift XX was a sunny day and I enjoyed a walk in the gardens – flowers and butterflies.

Shift XXI was wet and there were times that the only people in the conservatory were volunteers! I took some pictures inside the conservatory with my cell phone.

I parked near the Brookside Gardens Visitor Center rather than near the conservatory for Shift XXII. I hadn’t noticed the horsetail and gingko planting in the bed around the conservatory before…and the brightly colored bench. As I walked down on to the conservatory, I noticed a rotting stump with bright yellow function growing on it.

The moon was still out when I got to Brookside prior to Shift XXIII. Along the butterfly walk (the path to the ticket taker for the exhibit) the gold finches were enjoying seeds and there was still a Monarch caterpillar on one of the milkweed plants.

Shift XXIV was rainy – again. I manage a picture of a spider web that held big drops of water. Attendance was light enough that I took pictures inside the conservatory.

It was a sunny day again for Shift XXV…but attendance was light again. I took a series of Monarch pictures: caterpillars and two mating pairs.

For the final shift, I was fixated on palpi (structures that start on either side of the proboscis and then lay between the eyes) again because I had seen so many blue morphos that appear to not have any. Evidently the blue morpho frequently breaks its palpi while the owl butterfly (second picture) does not!

And so – a fond farewell to Wings of Fancy…until 2018.

More Butterfly Eyes and Palpi

Last week I posted about the Blue Morpho and Owl Butterflies – included macro views of their eyes and palpi. This week I have pictures of eyes and palpi of some other butterflies in Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy. It’s also easy to see the proboscis (some coiled…others extended) in these images. Note also the number of legs. All appear to have 4 – rather than six!

It turns out that the largest family of butterflies – Nymphalida (brush-footed butterflies  or four-footed butterflies) stand on only 4 legs. The two that are closest to the head are not used as legs; their purpose is not clear and may be different for different species. In the picture below you can see them: bristled and pointing downward toward the legs. Note that one of the palpi is damaged. Butterfly wings often look battered…and other parts of their bodies are easily damaged too.  

Back to School

The K-12 schools started again in Maryland this week. The traffic patterns have changed; there are about 8 cars that leave my neighborhood just after the elementary school bus (parents waiting to leave for work until their children are off to school)!

It’s been a long time since I was in K-12 but somehow September still means a ramp up of activity after a somewhat ‘lazy’ summer. There is a psychology from my own school experience…reinforced by my daughter’s experience.

This year September is busier than usual with volunteer shifts at Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy through September 17 and the training for volunteers at Howard County Conservancy followed by the start of field trips from many of the county schools. The Watershed Report Card program for high schoolers already has quiet a schedule that begins September 19 and continues through most of October.

I am also signed up for Conservation Easement Training in September.

I supposed if it ever gets slow – I could take a Coursera course….but right now it looks like this ‘fall’s back to school’ is already very full.

A Macro View of Blue Morpho and Owl Butterflies

Every time I go into Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy with my camera, I see something new. Did you know that the blue morpho has quite a lot of salmon color? Look at the images below and notice the color of:

• the palpi (the structures that come up on either side of the rolled up proboscis and between the eyes),
• the body markings,
•  the centers of the ‘eye’ markings on the underside of the wings, and
• the outer edge of the underside of the hind wing.

Below is a picture of two blue morphos that show both sides of the wings. There are reddish markings at the bottom of the open wing but most are in the part torn away in this battered specimen.

Switching to the owl butterfly - notice how different the eyes and palpi are from the blue morpho. They are brown and black and almost seem to match each other! The body looks furrier too!

The center of the ‘eye’ spot might have a dusting of blue – viewed in the right light.

Volunteering at Wings of Fancy at Brookside Gardens XV-XIX

The 5 most recent shifts at Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy have not been overly hot – unusual for August here in Maryland. Before the 15th shift, it was damp. I took some pictures under a bald cypress of a Cypress Gall (Midge) that had not matured enough to kill the small branch and some developing cones. When I walked over to the boardwalk toward the nature center I walked through a spider web that has been built overnight; not the best way to start the morning. I brushed myself off and headed into the conservatory. The shift was a special one for photographers – so not crowded at all and calmer than the public shifts.

It was raining for the entire 16th shift. I managed to find some dry spots under trees along the stream when I got there for my walk around the gardens prior to the shift. Some big rocks have been added to the stream bed to stabilize the banks. There is one area that eroded perilously close the fence and the road just beyond.

The slide show below is the rest of my walk. I moved fast when I was being rained on but took pictures when I found a sheltered place: 1) of a curve in the stream, 2) in the rose garden under the crepe myrtle trees, 3) a waterlily (note the ripples from the raindrops into the pool), and 4) under the cypress trees that kept the butterfly bench mostly dry. Wings of Fancy got off to a slow start that day because the ticket seller was late…and it was raining harder. The conservatory leaks! The tiny space between the ticket taker awning and the caterpillar house becomes a little waterfall when it is raining hard! But the exhibit was a good rainy day activity for people once they got into the conservatory.

The 17^th shift was not rainy. It was an early shift for photographers again and I relaxed before hand with a good walk around the gardens noting blooms (sumac, joe pye weed, sunflowers) and then some oddities on the bald cypress (something that looks like tiny yellow ‘flowers’, and a fuzzy caterpillar with horns), jewelweed growing near the boardwalk on the way to Brookside Nature Center (the plant is supposed to be good for treating poison ivy…but it often grows in locations the poison ivy does), and a cocoa tree in the part of the conservancy not used for the butterfly exhibit.

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The 18th shift was sunny – but not too hot. I’m paying more attention to the tiny yellow blobs on the bald cypress; one of them had red filaments. The rose garden is beginning to bloom more now that the high heat of summer is over.

The rest of the garden has benefited from the rain too and looks lush. I enjoyed trying to photograph the skipper butterflies on the Mexican sunflowers.

The 19th shift was sunny and cooler than I excepted; as I was walking around I was glad I was going to be in the conservatory once my shift started where it would be warmer. I talked to one of the Brookside staff about the tiny yellow blobs on the cypress; it’s not something they have seen before.

I headed up toward the scent garden and saw a dragonfly in the air. It landed on one of the maples…and sat while I managed to find him in the foliage for a zoomed image. The maple leaves are beginning to change color for fall.

Another sign of fall in the gardens – a cardinal molting and getting new feathers on its head. This is not bald…but all the new feather shave not come in so the crest looks scruffy and around the eye still needs additional feathers to look ‘normal.’

I walked over to the boardwalk to photograph the jewel weed again and got side tracked when I noticed a spider near one of the flowers. It took long enough to get the photograph I wanted that i hurried to the volunteer entrance to get into 'flight attendent' gear and ready for the shift. It was a busy morning in the exhibit.

The Wings of Fancy is over for 2017 on September 17….I’ll most about the last of my shifts just after ‘the end.’ It’s been a great volunteer experience!

Previous posts re Volunteering at Wings of Fancy: prep, I, II-IV, V-X, XI-XIV.

Owl Butterfly Eggs

Last weekend, I took a few minutes to photograph the eggs of the owl butterfly in Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit. I got as close as I could to the canna leaf where they were located and then clipped out the part of the picture to see them even better. The eggs quite small – about the size of the head of a straight pin – and look smooth to the eye. With the magnification of the enlarged picture it is easy to see that they:

• Are ribbed
• That they change as they develop with the white one being one that is probably not going develop. The others probably have a tiny caterpillar developing. Do you see the light brown C shape in the third egg from the left? Looks like a developing caterpillar!

One of the joys of volunteering at the Wings of Fancy exhibit is being there frequently enough to see the progression of butterfly development…and occasionally capturing some of it with my camera.

Celebrating Butterflies – Part 2

Continuing my August post about butterflies in the Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit --- what a difference lighting makes. Both pictures below are the underside of the malachite butterfly week. The most colorful butterflies often have reflective/physical color rather than pigment…and so light makes a tremendous difference.

I looked more carefully at the color patterns on the butterfly wings and noticed that the ribs of the wing play a role in the pattern of some butterflies

And others where the ribs were not part of the pattern.

Another two butterflies were the ribs are part of the pattern – and even are boldly outlined on part of the wing – are the Queen

And the Monarch butterflies.

There is always something new to notice in the butterfly exhibit!

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!

Volunteering at Wings of Fancy at Brookside Gardens XI-XIV

The first 4 shifts at Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy in August were not as hot as some of the shifts in July and I settled into the rotation. The discovery station always seemed to be the most crowded hour of the shift. There is so much there: butterflies emerging from chrysalises, plants that butterflies are laying eggs on, and touch samples (laminated butterfly wings for young children…butterflies that have succumbed for adults and older children).

Before the 11^th shift, I was a little late and only had time to take a few pictures along the walk up to the exhibit…but one was a Monarch butterfly; they’ve become rare enough to be a little celebration every time I see one.

The little hike before the 12^th shift was on the nature center board walk where I saw a spider excise a leaf that had been blown into its web; it was a neat job and the web was left intact.

A beetle was crawling down one of the big trees.

I walked back toward some of the formal gardens and saw a dragonfly in the mulch

And some odd growths on a bald cypress (fungus?).

It was raining before the 13^th shift (and for the rest of the day). I took two quick pictures with my cell phone before going into the conservatory to start my shift…some very well cypress cones

And flowers in a wet garden bed.

The 14^th shift was on a bright and sunny day. I went overboard with pictures! There a spicebush butterfly fluttering around the rose garden – this is one of the few images I got that was not blurred with its motion.

The roses in the garden were covered with water droplets from morning dew…somehow I like the flowers even better with the droplets.

There was a goldfinch enjoying one of the other plants. It contorted itself to get ‘the goodie’ from the plant.

As I walked back toward the conservatory – a Monarch butterfly was enjoying some flowers…and I zoomed to focus on how it was using its proboscis.

Previous posts re Volunteering at Wings of Fancy: prep, I, II-IV, V-X.

Flower Glow

Sometimes the light is just right…the flower bloom is at the right stage…it seems to glow from within.

It happened last week at Brookside Gardens. The hibiscus flower was in partial shade but the wind was blowing and the top part of the inner flower got direct sun for a few seconds. There were several fleeting opportunities to take pictures…the one I am including in this post is my favorite.

As I looked at the on the larger screen, I wondered if people glow and concluded that when I think of people glowing it isn’t from light…it is from something within. Looking back at people that came through the Wings of Fancy exhibit – it seems like the people I noticed ‘glowing’ were either young (preschool) or very old.

For the children, the glow came from seeing so many butterflies around them. They don’t appear overwhelmed or overly excited; they just stand and follow the butterflies with their eyes…a little smile on their face…their hands together.

For older people, it is a little different but sometimes the expression is the same. There was a 90-year-old woman in a wheel chair whose family had brought her to the exhibit to celebrate her birthday; she didn’t say very much but the look of her face was one of pure joy of being in that place at that time watching butterflies flutter around her. Another older lady – probably in her 80s – was more animated; she talked about when she was young and loving butterflies around where she lived but being afraid of caterpillars…not finding out until many years later than the caterpillars became butterflies. While she talked, she followed butterflies with her eyes; she was savoring her life – present and past.

The other people in the exhibit may not always glow but the happy voices and expressions on just about everyone’s face certainly makes the volunteer shifts enjoyable. The Wings of Fancy exhibit at Brookside Gardens in my universal happy place this summer!