Blue Monday: Butterfly Watch

Blue Monday is hosted weekly by Smiling Sally.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself, please head on over to her blog.

Wow, can you believe September is almost over? I find that very hard to accept. Not that it's my favorite month -- it definitely is not that. I'm not really fond of the month. Probably because it's my birth month (yet another year older, sigh), but also because it marks the official end of my favorite time of year and the official beginning of autumn. Not that I don't like the fall; but if fall is here, that also means winter is right around the corner. And that's something I don't even like to think about. Especially after the winter we had last year. Brrrrrr!

OK, enough of that. How did I get off on winter? What I really meant to say is: Wow, we actually had some rain last week! And over the weekend, we were inundated with just about every kind of insect you can think of. Including dozens of butterflies! For a while on Saturday I was playing hide-and-seek with a huge Tiger Swallowtail that was flitting around our sage bushes. Every time I managed to get the camera aimed and focused, the lovely butterfly would flutter off to another branch, and I'd end up with another blurry peekaboo shot much like this:

Hiding in the blossoms

But after many tries, I finally managed to get a couple of decent shots. This isn't the best, but it does allow you to see the lovely blue spots on its lower wings:

I believe the blue spots mean this was a female

And this was my favorite: wings spread, with a bright blue Texas sky in the background:

Tiger Swallowtail in Texas Sage bush