During a recent trip to the Desert Botanical Garden we saw insects showing off their wings.
Most people notice the zebra butterflies.
But up close the picture-winged fly’s wings are just as showy.
What do you think?
Category: butterflies (Page 13 of 43)
Even though it’s November, we still have butterflies in our yard. 
The rosemary is flowering, and it attracted this white butterfly.
The butterfly spent several minutes visiting the flowers, probing or feeding in each one.
Aren’t the stripy antennae with the yellow tips fun?
Taking a few minutes, it is possible to see even more butterflies. A duskywing skipper was on the same rosemary plant at the same time as this white, and tiny blue butterflies were fluttering around a nearby fairy duster. Queen and monarch butterflies commonly visit our milkweeds, and giant swallowtails glide by the citrus trees in the back. The snout butterflies and painted ladies seem to prefer the puff-ball flowers on the willow acacia.
In fact there’s no need to visit a butterfly exhibit because, with the proper flowering plants, the butterflies come to us.
For more information, see our previous posts during butterfly gardening with children week.
Five great nectar plants for butterflies
Growing list of children’s books about moths and butterflies
Remember we had adult monarch butterflies flying last week?
Well, look what they left behind.
Wait, what’s that?
Hungry, hungry monarch caterpillars is what they left.
We’ve noticed the caterpillars usually feed on the flower buds rather than other parts of the rush milkweed.
Photograph taken 10/11/2016.
See a previous post for more about caterpillars found on rush milkweed plants.
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.