The search for butterflies this past holiday weekend took this blogger into the neighbor’s field full of wildflowers. After this weekend’s dreary start, Labor Day proved to be a wonderful day for photos.
A spicebush swallowtail. This one may just have emerged from its chrysalis as it was unable to fly right away.
Spotted on Monday were some cabbage whites, a sulphur butterfly and a spicebush swallowtail.
According to butterfliesandmoths.org, Venango County is home to the West Virginia white, the cabbage white, the clouded sulphur and the orange sulphur butterflies.
A sulphur butterfly
Cabbage whites and West Virginia whites are fairly easy to tell apart with the West Virginia white being nearly all white.
The website provided this description for the clouded sulphur: “Upper surface of male wings bright, clear yellow with solid black edging; lower side of forewing with some dark submarginal spots; hindwing with silver cell spot rimmed with orange-pink, usually doubled. Female has 2 forms: yellow form with uneven black edging enclosing yellow spots, and a white form which is greenish-white rather than yellow. Spring and fall forms are smaller and less conspicuously marked.”
Here is what it said for the orange sulphur’s appearance: “Quite variable. Upperside of male yellow with orange overlay, yellow veins, wide black border, and dark black cell spot. Female yellow or white with irregular black border surrounding light spots. Underside hindwing spot silver with 2 concentric dark rings, and a spot above it.”
A female green darner dragonfly
A few dragonflies flitted along at the neighbor’s pond. Among them were a green darner and some meadowhawks.
A meadowhawk dragonfly
A katydid
Back home in the garden, the sunflowers opened their colorful petals to the sun.
Sunflower
Sunflower
Crazy critters
Sadie, Sherman and Buford try to scare up some water snakes at the neighbor’s pond.
(A Walk in the Woods contains photos from newsroom staffer Anna Applegate’s daily jaunts around her neck of the woods. Tagging along on the treks are dogs, Buford, Sherman and Sadie, and goats, Kyle and Kennedy. Applegate manages the Good Times and can be emailed at bigdogs.thederrick@gmail.com)
