Black Swallowtail Butterfly; a Tattered Angel

Butterflies are amazing fliers, while their large wings give their flight an appearance of haphazard out of control bouncing, they are in very good control of their flight path. Even more remarkable is that even with heavily damaged wings as the butterfly above, it had no difficulty flying from flower to flower and hovering while feeding!

I think this particular butterfly must have escaped predation by a bird, breaking and shredding parts of it's wings but getting away to live a bit longer, lay a few more eggs and help continue the species.

Here is a photo I took earlier in the week of the same species of butterfly with its wings intact:

I particularly like this image, seems a bit like an avenging angel!

In reality though, it is the same gentle butterfly whose young will decimate my parsely in the spring.

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Thank you for taking time to read my post, perhaps you will enjoy the links to more of my recent work below!

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Other recent work:

Hummingbird Hawk-moth



Macro Headshot Series: 3 Japanese Oak Silkmoth

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