(Prompted by https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2025/08/friday-writings-191-small-but-beautiful.html )
The large to giant, showy Swallowtails
and Birdwings always catch everyone's eyes
yet smaller eyes find just as much to admire
on the small wings of tiny butterflies.
This one has orange spots to rouse desire
wherever, following scent trails, she flies
attracting plain blue-winged little males
to places where blue lupines catch her eyes.
[photo: MassAudubon.org]
Meanwhile this species' females may have blue
spots on orange wings; they use them the same way,
except that, unlike Karner's Blue ones, they
eat more than one thing; always choose "weeds," too.
Obligingly, this minuscule insect
likes several plants that humans don't protect.
At the rate we're going it'll take this web site years to get to a study of the little Blue and Copper butterflies. Just like the Swallowtails, they either ignore or actively help plants of interest to humans. They're much easier to photograph than Swallowtails. Possibly because nobody feels proud of having caught a good photo of a Blue or Copper, they are currently very under-documented on science sites. Each of their wings is, in real life, about the size of a human fingernail. They are global, with different species in different places, but scientists think the most common species were inadvertently introduced to new places as humans travelled until species like the Common Copper became almost cosmopolitan.
The Karner Blue species, in which males are plain blue and females have orange spots, is endangered. Conservation efforts have included naming it as the State butterfly of New Hampshire.
I like the attention you've given butterflies. As part of the wider endangered world, I thought of the Carl Sagan quote: "We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."
ReplyDeleteA beautiful poem ~ yellow butterflies in particular entrance me, they are my Mother come to say Hello.
ReplyDeleteWhat beautiful wee things! Wikipedia tells me both are American, and although the Common Copper has travelled to other countries, not to the Southern Hemisphere so far. I am fascinated by American fauna and flora and fauna we don't have here – though I expect that operates in reverse too.
ReplyDeleteHa ha, *fauna and flora (only) ... though you certainly do seem to have extra varieties of both.
Deleteoh beautiful I love butterflies So delicate and colourful and so miraculously emerging from a chrysalis. Love that blue one
ReplyDelete