NOT a butterfly!

I promised not to blip yet another butterfly today.  And I've got to tell you, it wasn't easy to keep my word as I saw rare (for here) flyer today when I was walking with my naturalist group.  But, I do love a good frog and this little Pickeral Frog was just totally cooperative.  At one point, I was crouched at the very edge of the water, snapping shots with my macro lens, which he tolerated amazingly well.  (This taken from a distance of about 4 feet with the 300 mm lens).  

If you'd like the see the butterfly, it's on Flickr and it's a rather amazing Limenitis arthemis.  This species comes in two forms, the White Admiral that I got lucky enough to see today and the more common (for me) Red-Spotted Purple Admiral.  Apparently the two were categorized as separate species for a time, until scientists determined that they are just color variants of the same species.  Anyway, very interesting.

Speaking of interesting, the much anticipated Eclipse was this afternoon.  Here in northern New Jersey, we were well outside of the band of totality so only had about 75% of the sun obscured.  I sat outside while it was going on (not looking directly at it, natch).  Although the sun stayed out the entire time, it definitely got much weaker during the eclipse - kind of surreal, actually.  But the oddest thing was that all the cicadas and crickets/grasshoppers stopped singing.  It was eerie.  Didn't seem to affect the birds in any way that I could determine, but definitely the insects were impacted.  

Speaking of insects...I have somewhere around 12 new chrysalids and several more J'd caterpillars now.  The next batch is getting huge and the first of them is starting to wander.  Meanwhile, the Chrysalis Formerly Known as M is waiting quietly, all beautiful and green.  Any day now...  I'm so enjoying this year's Monarch Project.

Happy Monday, people.

xo
Debbi