I have an old Sony Cubershot and sometimes I get good photos, sometimes I don't...I would like a new camera too. My husband took the photo above with his dang phone!

Beautiful, Maridell.

Karen

Linda yes you can use your lens with a digital Canon

Here are some butterflies and moths that I took pictures of last year and this year
Luna Moth released 2 females and on male

Monarch from this year

Do not know what this moth

From last year

Great Spangled Fritillary
and Painted Lady

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
another Swallowtail (also an ETS?)

Lovely....I've missed those tigers...haven't seen any this year (except for the 2 two-tailed tigers I released). I think that second one is a dark tiger...cool!

I am fighting with the Monarchs. Trying to get my milkweed to recover and they are eating them so fast that the poor plants are dieing.

New flower beds for the butterflies , hummers and bees

Gollee, those look wonderful! What was used to keep the timbers together and in place?

We used Metal re-bars (metal poles that they use in building) My drill would not put the holes in the timbers so we jerry riged it. We may redo it this winter and put holes in the timbers and put the bars in the holes instead on each side of the timbers, if I can get a better dril. You can see one of the bars in the picture.

I see it. thanks Sandy. Hug Andre for me?

Will do

Those timbers are hard to deal with...the equipment required to either cut them or makes holes in them can be a bit expensive. I have one raised bed out on my property (outside my fenced yard) that we had to have the timbers cut and holes put in for rebars. Also have the bed caged with some low fencing around the rebar rods. All to make it indestructible, hopefully! If a person had never seen what wild hogs are capable of, one might think I'd gone overboard on that.

One of the Common Buckeyes that are around here. This is taken with my new camera...but I don't really know how to use it yet.

I have photos from the butterfly house at Reiman Gardens in Ames Iowa that I took this weekend. Hope this is the right place to share them.

There are up to 800 butterflies in the butterfly house with 40-50 species from around the world. Only have a few photos...those guys are hard to get pictures of



These two photos are of the same butterfly:

Beautiful.

And that's a lot of chrisalides!

Karen

There were a lot more chrysalides. It was neat to see them.

Very cool. Those blue ones are especially intriguing.

Thanks for sharing Maridell! How lovely.
We have tons of pipevine swallowtails flying around our property. I've been chasing them around for near a year trying to get a photo. Sound familiar Linda? They sure don't light for long. Finally caught one resting the other day. I only have a Sony Cybershot pocket camera w/ 5x zoom. It does well but when you try to get the real closeups it lacks clarity & crispness. You'll see what I mean in the second photo but I can't resist looking at those colors close up.




Now I just need to find their host plants on our property. We have bull thistle but I understand that is not a host for them.