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Butterflies are cool looking insects and they do a great job at pollinating flowers. But I find them challenging to photograph, especially since I don’t have a super fancy zoom lens or a tripod. Unlike bees, they won’t let me get too close without taking off, and they don’t always keep their wings wide open long enough while resting on flowers. Oh, and they love to stay on flowers that are out of reach, so I can’t photograph them from a good angle.
Still, I was pretty lucky to find this beautiful, yellow tiger swallowtail butterfly (more formally known as Papilio glaucus) a few weeks ago. Somehow, it landed on the same kind of bright pink flowers I photographed that bee fly the same day, even though those bushes were in different areas of the botanical garden. Those flowers must be tasting delicious. The first flower cluster this tiger swallowtail butterfly picked didn’t make for a great picture, but he did help me out a bit as he kept hopping from flower to flower.
This was much better already than the first picture I took.
This tiger swallowtail was nice enough to display its beautiful wing markings for me to take one last picture of it quickly before it took off.
Are you a butterfly fan, or do they creep you out?
