Butterfly season must be off to a faster start than I had thought! We spent an enjoyable couple of hours today butterflying at Elk Rock State Park in Marion County, Iowa:
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We quickly saw a lot of butterfly activity, especially with SPRING AZURES. We ended the day with more than 30 different ones; here is one of the first we bumped into:
Although not sharp at all, it was still fun to capture this azure in flight:
I was excited to find this somewhat-early COMMON CHECKERED-SKIPPER:
The next butterfly we stumbled into was my target for the day, HENRY'S ELFIN. It wasn't more than a couple minutes before we saw 8-10 of these guys:
The next butterfly we found was a somewhat expected EASTERN COMMA:
Stopping briefly for some wildflowers, I snapped this photo of DUTCHMAN'S BREECHES (Dicentra cucullaria):
The next bug I bumped into was the most unexpected of the day, an AMERICAN SNOUT:
Last but not least, we found this COMMON BUCKEYE, another very early individual:
Below the dam at Red Rock, I saw a distant large, dark butterfly flying along the back of the dam. I snapped some VERY distant photos. After major cropping, it looks like the butterfly is a BLACK SWALLOWTAIL:
We ended the day with 11 different species of butterflies. They were:
Black Swallowtail
Cabbage White
Clouded Sulphur
Henry's Elfin
Spring Azure
Eastern Comma
Mourning Cloak
Red Admiral
Common Buckeye
American Snout
Common Checkered-Skipper
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