Monday, August 9, 2010

Butterfly Photos

Here are some of this year's visitors to the garden! In our Midwest/Zone 5, you can't beat coneflowers, bee balm (Monarda) and Butterfly Weed (Asclepias) for attracting these beautiful creatures! More on butterfly gardening here. They also attract hummingbirds, hummingbird moths and bees. Bees are essential to pollinate the flowers- without them I wouldn't have those great cucumbers I blogged about or many other delicious vegetables!

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail


Eastern Tiger Swallowtail


Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
(not an error- they come in 2 colors, read here for more details)


Red Admiral

Red Admiral

Red Admiral

Monarch

Hummingbird Moth


Bee

Posted by at 8:33 AM
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2 comments:

  1. Wow! I didn't know those blue swallowtails were also Tiger Swallowtails! I've only seen the blue ones a few times in the yard. We mostly get the yellow ones. Great shots of everything! And you even have a Hummingbird Moth. We only saw them for the first time last year in Millennium Park, and Terry has seen them in our yard this year, but I haven't. They are cool! I've only started being interested in bugs this year, because I was mostly always looking at the birds.

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  2. Yeah, there's a bunch of swallowtails that look very similar- the other kind I also see are black swallowtails, but that's when I grow more dill- they lay their eggs on it. This is the first year I saw a hummingbird moth. They seem to come by around dusk.

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