So many Monarchs in one place

-jay

The weight of butterflies=heavy

Lepidopterans!

These are photos of the lepidopterans (butterflies, moths) I've been encountering recently. The top two images are the ones I saw in Kansas City on 9/10(sat). The 2nd close up butterfly was found dead in that position and its leaves seemed to be very translucent/clear. Even though it was windy and rainy, it somehow managed to stay in that position.

The last photo of a moth mimicking the ground was taken on 9/6 (Monday) near Wilmette, IL, where the Baha'i Temple is located. I ended up touching it because I couldn't tell if it was dead or alive. After I touched it few times it tweaked a little but didn't make much movement. I assumed it was asleep and left it alone :)

Sae

Jo Whaley: Butterflies and Photography

Interesting photography work by Jo Whaley
Artist's website here: http://www.jowhaley.com/index.cfm?bhcp=1

From The New Yorker:
“The Theater of Insects” (Chronicle) is a cabinet of curiosities for your pocketbook. The photographer and avid lepidopterist Jo Whaley stages beetles, butterflies, and caterpillars in hand-crafted scenes. I can imagine these teensy stages piled on a dusty bookshelf, each featuring their own performance. As the insects’ wings blend into the background—old daguerrotypes, corroded metal, bits of paper and cardboard—the plot of unlikely coincidences unfolds.

Whaley is fascinated by melanism, the way that insects, like butterflies, evolve to blend into their surroundings, which in the industrialized world are often dreary and industrial. And yet, with graphic compositions and colors that illuminate the pages, the images seem playful, containing worlds in which beetles, metals, photographs, music sheets, and more make unlikely bedfellows. Like any good Wunderkrammer, the book aims for scientific display and stops somewhere near surreal folly.

posted by Wesley

Playing Tag with Royalty (monarchs)

Right now in northern Illinois the monarch butterflies are at their peak on their journey southward towards Mexico to overwinter.

This year, the Insect World class is participating in the Monarch Watch program of tagging and releasing these travelers in hopes of gathering data about their epic migration.

This weekend out the forest preserve
we had quite some luck, seeing a greater density of monarchs than I'd personally seen in the past five years.

We caught and tagged many - sticking the tracking numbers to the underside of their bright orange/black hindwings and letting them go.

We look forward to more in the coming two weeks....

AY