Silvery Blue Butterfly

The West Rutland Marsh Part 1

I found some interesting spring butterflies while birding the West Rutland Marsh yesterday.

Don't get my wrong the birding was great too. The marsh and surrounding area was alive with spring time activities, there were birds on territory, others singing while still others built nests. Bee's were busy gathering pollen from the flowering tree which filled the air with their sweet scent.

The Baltimore Orioles sang from high in the tree tops, the sound of woodpeckers marking of their nesting area filled the woods and yes, Spring was in evidence everywhere yesterday. A Red-eyed female Eastern Towhee had two males courting her in song, boy did I want to get a photo of them, their beautiful colors and that red eye was quite a site to see. But they stayed in the thickets and the only chance that I got was when the female landed on a fence post long enough to pick the camera up, look , focus pressed the trigger and the bird was gone. And all I had was a photo of a bunch of sticks, but I did get to see them. My honey always says, ”sometimes you’re the bug and sometimes you’re the windshield” I was the bug on more then one occasion yesterday which is way I was so excited to find the some spring butterflies. They were not any better at sitting still either , but they did take my mind off how badly I was doing photographing birds. At first I thought I had found a Spring Azure and never gave it another thought, I was happy just seeing this amazing little sapphire blue butterfly. I thought that it must have just emerged because it did not show any of the ware that comes with age. It wasn’t till I got home and put the images on the computer that I realized what I actually had found was a Silvery Blue Butterfly, one of the first blue butterflies of spring. Ahhh the learning curve, what a great part of the Journey !

Complete Report of what I saw yesterday at the West Rutland Marsh chick this .
Pete

Story and photos ©2008 Peter Manship