Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)
I’m a little behind the time curve with today’s blog post due to several reasons but I still like to share these two photos with you, despite they were created already two weeks ago.
These two butterfly species are the first ones we can find here on the bluffs above the Little Maquoketa Valley in spring. The Mourning Cloak sometimes shows up as early as the snow thaws and this year it was even in February. It’s not an abundant butterfly, but we see them every spring after they emerge from hibernation.
The Red Admiral shows up a bit later and although we don’t have a lot of their preferred larval food plant here, sting nettles, their larvae will probably find plenty of them somewhere else.
You might expect that this was created with a macro lens but I was actually out for some bird photography, with the 150-600 plus teleconverter on camera. Both butterflies used the same tree at the same time to get some exposure to the sun. Two easy shots of the two we see first every spring…
Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa)