Vanassa atalanta - severly attracted to Echinacea.
Red Admiral Assemblage
Close up.
Now that is quite a photo! You ought to tag that one to put in the DG photo contest with the same caption, 'Red Admiral Assemblade'.
Suzy
OMG!!!!!!!!! Will you just look at that!!!!!!!!!!!! Awesome!!!!!!!!
Jack - Great photos of the Red Admirals!
What a great photo!!!
WOW!!!!! GREAT photo!
Carla
Couple more photos from yesterday's event.
Admiral's convention.
one more
Fab pics of your red admirals! You must have a really delicious variety of coneflower!? And a lot of nettles near by? I have never seen such a thing!
And your coneflowers are so big and bloomy! Mine are just straggley things right now....
Keep taking pics! You have some interesting stuff going on in your garden!
Wow! I haven't seen that many RAs on flowers before. We get a handful or so whenever a woodpecker manages to damage the royal oak. They cluster around the sap seepage.
Really is a wonderful photo!!! Do you normally get that many at one time or was there a recent brood emergence? Either way, truly lovely photos!!!
~ Cat
Would you look at that! Wow! Got to be a photo winner for sure! They're lined up like little soldiers. Wonder if they all are newly "hatched" close by to be assembled together like that?
What a wonderfully magical moment you captured! Kudos to you. I'll bet when they were in flight it looked like an aerial ballet. Great photo. Thanks for sharing.
jmorth!
Holy Cow! Love that view!
Adrienne
What a wonderful sight. I hope to see some soon.
Lovely! You could have them printed out and frame them!
4 days later, the Red Admiral's fascination with these Echinacea persists...
(picture from 26th of June)
Quite a few Question Marks (Polygonia interrogationis) have recently started to frequent the Echinacea along side the Red Admirals. When the Question's wings are closed they camouflage as a dried leaf.
Another one:
Question unfurls.
Amasing! What do your Echinacea have that mine don't? That is the Question! LOL
I'd be in butterfly heaven to have that many pretties flying around my gardens. Keep posting pictures. Your shots are so interesting.
Oh, man, that Question Mark unfurling is a great picture! You need to send that into Bugfiles for sure!
My Question Marks (if that's what they are) just go to brown soil and sit there, but they would never allow me to get close enough for a photo. Of course, the photo would be brown butterflies on brown soil, so not too attractive!
Don't forget to post that to bugfiles!
Suzy
Jack - Your pictures are so fascinating! I just love all your visitors! You've certainly sold me on Echinacea!!! I have some growing in my garden beds currently, but no blooms yet. I hope I get some visitors when they do bloom. Right now what seems to be attracting my few butterflies and lots of bees are my Black-eyed Susans and Zinnias. I also have some Pink Bee Balm that has quite a few critters flying back and forth between them!
And I tried for years to rid my property of nettles. Do you ever succeed!! I doubt it.
The Red Admirals and Question Marks are still in the Echinacea. Here's 2 Admirals.
This message was edited Jul 3, 2007 1:38 AM
close up
opening
Red Admiral & Question Mark
Jack - I just love your photos! I have some Echinacea growing from seeds in my garden beds. No flowers yet though. One clump has nice large leaves. I wonder what I need to do to get them to flower? Are you using a particular fertilizer or anything?
Your photos are great esp. the first post with the group like that! We got our first red admirals last week but they don't seem to care about the echinacea! We only have a very few stinging nettles and just added hops vine...what do your red ad. cats eat?
Here it is 2 weeks later and the Echinacea still exert an influence over the habits of butterflys. This one is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus).
As always Jack~ Your pics are stupendous!
Echinacea is definatly a must have for the butterfly garden. Even what are normally considered fruit and dung feasters like Red Admirals and Question Marks flock to the flowers. They both really love "the brew", we make with Guinnes Stout, Bananas, and Brown Sugar. For anyone wanting to attract these 2 species, (provided they come to your area at all...) The brew will shew them in like a magnet. Then you can watch which flowers in your yard they both like too.
Lovely pics Jack!!!
Thanks debnes.
Close up.
Fantastic Jack!!!
Gee, this is the second thread today where the photos have been so crisp, sharp and well-framed that they look like they were taken by professionals!
I need a new camera! LOL!
Suzy