I keep saying I have enough pictures of Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) butterflies, and I won't take any more, but I have a feeling that is going to be about as effective as my resolution not to take any more pictures of egrets or pelicans. They are far too beautiful to resist.
These were out and enjoying the sunshine and shining silver, white, and orange in the sun.
I'm pretty sure this one and the next one are Mourning Cloaks (Nymphalis antiopa). I'm also quite excited about identifying them myself, first go, in the park itself.
Look at the delicate edging there. The sheer variety and beauty of butterflies is amazing. There's the bright, showy orange and silver, and then there is this, much quieter, elegant beauty.
A Marine Blue (Leptotes marina. I did have to go to bugguide for verification, but (bounces excitedly) I had a guess before hand! I did, I did! All based on remembering a bit from reading (I'm wanting to say the passage I remembered was in Broadsides from the Other Orders, but I can't find it, so maybe it wasn't. Anyway, it was someone being enthusiastic about their delicate beauty, and I remembered, and I applied it to the correct butterfly! And, yes, they do have a delicate beauty. You know, before I started taking pictures, I didn't realize that the bodies of butterflies had so many wonderful colors).
Oh, and my picture made it into the bugguide catalog, too. I'm always excited when that happens. Yay!
A different Marine Blue, sitting somewhere else with its wings folded.
Before I got my bugguide answer, I checked around online and found Butterflies of Orange County, which I've now listed in my "Oft Visited Sites" section on the sidebar there. It actually isn't oft-visited, yet because I just found it, but poking around, I think it is going to become an oft-visited and very helpful, informative site (The entry on Marine blues is here, if you're interested. Well, technically, it's here even if you're not interested, but hopefully you are because, I mean, it's butterflies).
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