wordsfromanneli

Thoughts, ideas, photos, and stories.

Tag Archives: swallowtail


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Summer Challenges

The grass is parched and oh so dry,

Our butterfly the same,

So hot and thirsty, he could cry,

Petunias look aflame.

His coat is tattered, battle scarred,

From dragonfly attacks,

The lovely patterns cruelly marred,

He fears that love he lacks.

He thinks of cooler days gone by

When rhodos welcomed him,

And how his lovely coat, now dry,

Is tattered and so dim.

 

But every life through time must pass

However short or long,

He’s dreaming of that greener grass,

And how he once was  strong.

 

 

 


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Insects Side by Side

The closest I.D. I can come up with is the western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus).

He was snacking on the leaves of a very large Mexican orange bush (Choisya ternata).  I wonder if he was aware of the danger that lurked less than a foot away.

Can you spot the gray paperish wasp nest in the bottom right quadrant of the photo below?

I think this (below) is the kind of wasp that was working on the nest. It looks like a sand wasp but Wikipedia says they live in burrows in the soil (sand). Would they live in a paper nest like this? Probably not, but I don’t know…. I haven’t been able to identify this insect, but it seemed to belong to this gray paper nest. Any ideas? Not a yellow jacket.