Butterflies
Day-flying, brightly coloured, and the one group of insects nearly everyone is glad to see. A butterfly rests with its wings closed over its back, which is the quick way to tell one from a moth, and the two sides of the wing are often so different that a species can be hard to name unless it shows both.
A butterfly's colour is dust. The wings are covered in thousands of tiny overlapping scales, each one a single colour, and the blue of a Morpho is not pigment at all but the structure of the scale itself, bending light the way a soap film does. Rub a wing and the colour comes off on your finger.
- American Lady Vanessa virginiensis
- Anise Swallowtail Papilio zelicaon
- Autumn Leaf butterfly Doleschallia bisaltide
- Birdwing butterfly Troides sp.
- Black Swallowtail Papilio polyxenes
- Blue Morpho Morpho peleides
- Cabbage White Pieris rapae
- Citrus Swallowtail Papilio demodocus
- Clipper Parthenos sylvia
- Common Buckeye Junonia coenia
- Common Mormon Papilio polytes
- Cracker butterfly Hamadryas sp.
- Cruiser butterfly Vindula sp.
- Doris Longwing Heliconius doris
- Duskywing Erynnis sp.
- Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Papilio glaucus
- Emerald Swallowtail Papilio palinurus
- Giant Swallowtail Papilio cresphontes
- Glasswing Greta oto
- Gray Hairstreak Strymon melinus
- Greater fritillary Speyeria sp.
- Julia butterfly Dryas iulia
- Leopard Lacewing Cethosia cyane
- Longwing Heliconius sp.
- Malachite Siproeta stelenes
- Mexican Bluewing Myscelia ethusa
- Monarch Danaus plexippus
- Mourning Cloak Nymphalis antiopa
- Orange Oakleaf Kallima sp.
- Owl butterfly Caligo sp.
- Pansy butterfly Junonia sp.
- Pearl Crescent Phyciodes tharos
- Pink-spotted Cattleheart Parides iphidamas
- Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor
- Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta
- Red Lacewing Cethosia biblis
- Red-banded Hairstreak Calycopis cecrops
- Silver-spotted Skipper Epargyreus clarus
- Silver-washed Fritillary Argynnis paphia
- Skipper Hesperiidae
- Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria
- Spicebush Swallowtail Papilio troilus
- Sulphur butterfly Phoebis sp.
- Summer Azure Celastrina neglecta
- Swallowtail, unidentified Papilio sp.
- Tiger Longwing Heliconius hecale
- Tree Nymph Idea leuconoe
- White Admiral Limenitis arthemis arthemis
- Zebra Longwing Heliconius charithonia
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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