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I’ve been waiting almost patiently all summer to take a photo like this one. You see, I’ve noticed that I’ve had a lot of butterflies in my garden this year. Oh, I’ve always had butterflies and moths flying around, but this year there have been so many more. Monarch butterflies have been a rare site too, but again, this year I’ve seen at least one or two monarchs visiting my garden on a daily basis.
The trouble was that every time I went outside with my camera the darn Monarchs seemed to know that I was trying to focus my attention on them and they’d flit away in the breeze. As soon as I’d go back inside they’d come back for a visit. I’ve been starting to think that these creatures might be more intelligent than I thought they were.
Finally, on Thursday, one stuck around the garden long enough for me to zoom in and take a number of pictures. I had wanted to take some close up photos for several reasons. The number one reason being I knew it would make for a nice photo since Monarchs are such nice looking butterflies. The second major reason was that I wanted to make sure that it was indeed a Monarch. You see, there is another butterfly that looks very similar to the Monarch and that is the Viceroy butterfly. Viceroy’s have horizontal dark lines on their lower wings, and Monarchs don’t – that is the one major way to tell the difference. Now I know for sure that I have definitely had Monarchs visiting my milkweed (2 types), bee balm, phlox, and hibiscus (3 types).
Now if I can only get humming birds to visit my garden I’ll be a happy camper.
