Our world has been alive lately with beautiful butterflies and moths flying about!  I've combined these two challenges because that's exactly how they are happening in everyday, simultaneously.

We live in a subdivision, but have been blessed with a great deal of nature around us.  We live on a cul-de-sac lot which backs up to some dense woods, and we are on a fairly new street (only 3 houses so far), and there are numerous empty lots growing wild around us.  In particular there is one to the right of us and a whole bunch of them to the right and off in the distance.  We get to experience not only the woods wildlife, but also that of the open meadows.

View to the Right of our House

And the butterflies just love the meadow, especially because it is full of lots of clover and other wildflowers.  It has truly been alive with many different types of butterflies, grasshoppers, and bumblebees!  Particularly if the day is very warm and full of sunshine.  We've had lots of those days lately which has afforded itself to some great photographs.

The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is by far the most numerous in the meadow, the largest, and the most friendly.  These beautiful butterflies will let you get right up next to them and practically pet them before flying away, thus why photos are so easy.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

The Great Spangled Frittilary is pretty friendly too, if you remember from my post HERE.  The kids and I love the metallic silver spots on the underside of their wings.

And the beautiful flamin' orange colors on their back.

This photo I believe is of a Spicebush Swallowtail.  They are hard to photograph for one main reason...there upper wings flutter about almost constantly, as you can see by the blur.

So, we thought it most helpful to include a video.

And the prized photo of the day...a Monarch!  Boy, are they hard to photograph.  I had to send the kids to the sidelines, hush them like ten times, sit real still, and zoom way far in, but I got it!  How stunning!

This one we just recently became acquainted with, the Least Skipper.  It took me awhile to get this photo too, but finally success!

This is another one we don't see too often, the Tawny Crescent.

We also saw lots of neat dragonflies on our walk.  This one was particularly neat, the Green Darner.  Again, I had to zoom way far in to get it.

Because of all the butterfly observations lately I've created a couple of new forms if you are interested.  They are in pdf format.

Butterfly Journal Page

Taking Note of the Butterflies List

We've also been paying a lot of attention to the moths lately too.  Especially one in particular that flies during the day!  My post on the Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth is HERE.

Nature Journal Entries on the life cycle of a Hummingbird Moth:

If you'd like to participate in any of these great challenges, please visit Barb at her blog Handbook of Nature Study.