Sunflowers and Swallowtail

The monarch has not returned. But a few days ago, a swallowtail butterfly visited our backyard. I went out to photograph the very colorful sunflowers and noticed the swallowtail fluttering. The sunflowers were there to stay, I followed the colorful insect.

Female Eastern Swallowtail Butterfly

In the past few years, I wrote about swallowtail butterflies twice. One of them had a significant part of its wing missing without affecting its mobility. The second one had one of its tails intact. But, this one was a nice specimen with all its tails, wings, and hairy back intact.

I am not a nature photographer, as I said before. Photographing butterflies appeals to me because they visit the flowers almost at eye level. And, even when they seem to fly away, they make a loop and come back, not always, but often enough for me to follow them.

I was surprised to learn that swallowtails mainly live on tree tops and come down to enjoy the nectar of various flowers. Thanks for the visits! The blue dots around the edges of its wings indicated that it was a female Eastern Swallowtail. And its long, articulated legs seemed to fit any terrain. I followed it mainly around the purple cone flowers for a few minutes, then suddenly, it seemed to take a bow and decided to go higher away from my lens.

Click on the images to see them larger, uncropped, and read their titles.

The Sunflowers

Our friend Chris gave us a package of sunflower seeds a while ago to be planted in April. We planted the seeds in a seed starter; there were eight seeds. They sprouted in a few days and started growing taller. I had to put small supports to keep them upright as they tried to reach the windows.

Around the beginning of May, I asked the gardeners to plant them in the backyard. While transferring the small seed pots into the ground we lost a couple to the wind. Then the resident rabbits ate the top of one or two, and we ended up with three healthy plants gaining height practically every day.

We went out to check on them. Dennis put a net around the surviving ones to keep the rabbits away. They grew at a good clip and started budding. The buds got larger but were still buds. I photographed them every so often. One day, Jan came in and showed me the photograph of a sunflower in bloom which was just a large bud the day before. It almost popped open.

The very dark maroon-colored petals and the center seed core look striking. After chasing the swallowtail while it moved from one coneflower to the next, I photographed the sunflowers. One even had a resident bee carefully moving from one seed to the next to grab a little more pollen.

They are getting taller, and a few more buds may open up yet. We expect them to get as tall as eight feet probably in mid-August. We’ll see. In the meantime, here they are in their regal maroon regalia!