Hi everyone,
Marilyn sent an email to me and I just had to share it with you… Wait till you see these tiny creatures…
Take it away, Marilyn…
My biologist friend Larry loves these. He watches them as if they were a TV program.
They are pygmy blues. The larger wing section is about the size of my index fingernail. I think they are called blue because the sun catches the blue coloring and not the brown. They are hyperactive — wings are always moving — I didn’t see one glide or stop to pose.
Carlye Calvin (the photographer) had to put her camera down in a likely spot and wait for one to settle in front of it in order to get these pictures. If I hadn’t had Larry there to point them out as they were flying around a known favorite bush, I would have assumed they were small flying bugs or maybe flies, but if you stop and focus, you’ll see that they really are butterflies, the smallest in N America. There are smaller ones in, I think, Chile.
Larger butterflies are usually alone, or the white ones are in pairs. These tiny ones appear to live in a group. They like saltbushes with a lot of dried branches underneath to hide in unless it’s warm and sunny. It was too cool here when we looked, but after lunch it was warm and sunny, and Larry suggested that we could go back — it was miles out of the way, but his gasoline, so why not?
I sat in the car with the door open, nearly on top the bush, and he took his walker that has a seat and sat on the other side. We were too big for the butterflies to comprehend, so they flew happily around the bush, ignoring us. They were a size that would have looked right with Linda’s dollhouse. You really need both to see them and to see pictures to appreciate them. There are whole worlds around us that we don’t know about.
They are just BEAUTIFUL, Marilyn! I would LOVE to see one in person too! It must have been a magical moment!
Thank you VERY MUCH for our Nature lesson today! I’m sure everyone is thinking the same thing!
I will see everyone tomorrow, (Tuesday, I’m hoping to check on Word Press and get my Comments back and a few other issues take care of!)
Blessings, Jeanne
