It had to be two...

(Sung to the tune of Frank Sinatra's It Had to be You) ...

The day started with monsoon-like rains, dictating a morning in the office for me. By lunchtime, the clouds were breaking and I decided to eat my lunch on the patio. I had every intention of blipping another hummer today (yes, even at the risk of overkill). And they were certainly cooperative, zooming around like missiles, hovering in front of my face, just being summer hummingbirds. And I counted 18 today, so it's not like I was at any shortage of willing subjects...

And then the eastern tigers showed up. Not one, not two, but SEVEN! They were swooping and floating around the garden, to my utter delight. I chose this shot because it shows you a bit of both sides of the wings of this magnificent butterfly. The one on top is showing signs of wear - the colors not so brilliant and parts of the wing gone. I also like that I got a little green sweat bee in the frame (a complete surprise!) This is the second flight of the tigers here; the spring flight was poor with lower numbers than usual. The summer flight has been staggering in terms of sheer numbers.

I've posted a couple of other shots of the swallowtails, a close up of a carpenter bee and three hummers HERE on Flickr, if you'd like to have a look. The first shot in the series shows an intact tiger with beautiful wing colors - a perfect specimen, I'd say. One more thing to love about these big butterflies is that they are ridiculously easy to photograph since they tend to nectar with wings spread wide and are quite tolerant of humans/cameras. And they will spend quite a bit of time on the same flower, making it easy to get lots of shots from different angles. Gotta love that.

I'm making kofta curry tonight - from the curry recipe book that BikerBear/Anni gave me when she was here visiting last month. I've been dying to try out one of the recipes and today seemed like a good day for it. YUM!

Happy Friday, people!

xxoo
Debbi