I was leaving the house today and there was a really neat butterfly on my purple cone flowers. In fact there were two of them. So I went back in the house and got the new camera, set it to macro, and tried it out. I don’t think the butterflies liked the infrared autofocus, but they hung around long enough for me to get this one.
It seems to be an American painted lady, Vanessa virginiensis, in the family of brushfooted butterflies. It looks very different on top than on the underside of its wings which you see here.
I liked the picture so much that I cropped it and added it to my banner pictures at the top of the page. The pattern of the red-tipped flower spines is pretty dramatic up close along with the butterfly’s pattern.
that’s so pretty! The butterfly looks fake, but I know it’s not. It’s just such interesting markings. Sort of reminds me of a casino.
This is really a GREAT shot. I guess the close up mode made the background blur. The detail in the butterfly and flower are amazing, and the colors used by the bug and flower are so different it looks like two separate photos cut and paste together. Can you e-mail me a full size? I’d like to include in my desktop rotation.