MORE FROM MEADOWLARK GARDENS...BUTTERFLIES

I was happy for the opportunity to observe so many butterflies at the garden.  Ninety-nine percent of these photos were taken by Gregg.

Here are a few facts about them.

Butterflies range in size from a tiny 1/8 inch to a huge almost 12 inches.

Butterflies can see red, green, and yellow.  

Some people say that when the black bands on the Woolybear caterpillar are wide, a cold winter is coming.

The top butterfly flight speed is 12 miles per hour. Some moths can fly 25 miles per hour.

Monarch butterflies journey from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of about 2,000 miles, and return to the north again in the spring.

Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.

Representations of butterflies are seen in Egyptian frescoes at Thebes, which are 3,500 years old.

Antarctica is the only continent on which no Lepidoptera have been found.

There are about 24,000 species of butterflies. The moths are even more numerous: about 140,000 species of them were counted all over the world.

Thanks for looking and have a great weekend!

The butterflies shown here are the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (yellow with four black bands on the front wings), the Eastern Black Swallowtail (black with two rows of yellow spots), and what I think is an Orange Sulphur (third photo from the top).  However, I wasn't able to get a clear enough photo of this one and it is a screen shot from a video, probably distorted.  It would not settle long enough for a photo.  I couldn't find an exact match anywhere.  Any help would be appreciated.