Watching Butterflies

When I was little, I loved to go out to the empty fields near our home and catch butterflies with my little white butterfly net. They were almost always little white cabbage butterflies caught in my little white net, and sometimes they would be put in a glass jar with holes punched in the lid for observation before I grew bored and released them (because a butterfly in a jar is of course boring--it can't do anything a butterfly is supposed to do!).

As an adult, I can't imagine sweeping up a butterfly in a net. I'd be fearful of damaging their delicate wings, or accidentally pulling off a threadlike black leg. But I now realize there is no need to capture a butterfly to get close and observe them, and the fact that they are free to come and go at their whim makes the moments I get to spend with them that much more precious.

Some butterflies are incredibly difficult to observe: the little guys who swirl around low to the ground, often in paired dances so small and fast that, by the time I notice them, they have moved off beyond view. Others, however, are big and colorful and kind enough to spend many minutes at the same patch of flowers, pausing at one after another to sip nectar before fluttering lazily to the next.

I spent a pleasant number of minutes in the company of a female Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) on the Greenway last week. It was not necessary to confine her in a jar to observe her closely--just slow movement and awareness of where my shadow would fall.

She methodically visited flower after flower around the same shrub. I had ample time to observe the furling and unfurling of her proboscis; the intricate veins and scales on her deep onyx wings, with tiny jewels of yellow, sapphire and orange adorning their perimeter.

I could appreciate the way her dainty, segmented legs clung to the flower while she fed, and the elegant arc of her antennae. Her body, particularly her head and thorax, were covered in a velvety black fur that extended to the top of her legs.

She was a study in color, texture, and movement. I have no idea how long I might have stood out on the Greenway watching her, had she not grown weary of that particular shrub and fluttered off beyond my reach.

These moments are why places like the Sycamore Greenway and other natural areas are so important: they provide an opportunity for wildlife to go about their lives in close proximity to our own, and we are the richer for time we are able to spend with them.