Monday, August 15, 2011

Butterflies Everywhere

I've decided that it's going to be butterfly week! My last post was successful, so I figured, "Why not?" What really happened is that since seeing that last black swallowtail I stumbled on a field that was completely full of butterflies. I thought I had slipped into some kind of a fairy tale dimension.

It's not every day that you find hundreds of butterflies in such a small place. There may have even been thousands. There were butterflies flitting about and there were butterflies landing on plants. But the best thing of all was that they were stopping long enough for me to get pictures like these.

And while I was taking my pictures a group of kids walked past me on the trail. I heard one of them tell the others to make sure they stayed quiet because I was taking pictures of the butterflies. They were very polite and courteous, especially for children. Take that Rob!

Speaking of our new good friend Rob Wayne; his first article back wasn't quite as abrasive as I expected, but it was still quite angry. He assured me that they'll get worse. I make sure I check his work before it's published though, but just to make sure the language stays clean.

He has indeed increased the comment count over at Nature Center Magazine, and the comments that he got were more passionate and detailed than usual. Thanks to those who left them. Overall I'm happy with the results. So I guess I'll let Rob keep on speaking his mind, no matter how twisted that may be.

Let's just change the subject a bit. I have another little blog tip for you! This one isn't a piece of CSS code or anything like that. What I have for you is a program for all of you Windows users. I mentioned in another tip that our picture size should be about 800px or less.

You also might benefit from watermarking your pictures. Take a look at all of my photos here at The Everyday Adventurer. They all have a link to my blog in the bottom right corner. That's a watermark. I'm going to give you a link to a program that can both resize and watermark your photos. It can do that to as many as you want all at once, and the program is totally free!

The name of the program is FastStone Photo Resizer. This is the program I use to resize all of my photos. They have a few other programs that are very useful. Some of them are free and some are not. Take a look at them all.

Here's the link: FastStone

So now let's get back to nature. Now we're seeing my last butterfly picture of the day. Each one of these butterflies is a type of swallowtail. Over at Nature Center Magazine today we are featuring the video I took of this field of butterflies. Yup, just the same trick as last week. If you want to see these butterflies in action, just pop over there and take a look.

And I'll leave you with these words. Butterfly week! Butterfly week! BUTTERFLY WEEK!


Nature Center Magazine - Your starting place for nature!

19 comments:

  1. And so, butterfly lovers in butterfly weeks.

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  2. I have tried to take photos but they never stay still long enough, or Sadie comes lumbering along just at the wrong moment. I'll content myself looking at yours.

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  3. Gorgeous shots of those lovely butterflies... :D

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  4. Those are some amazing shots! Happy butterfly week! :-)

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  5. oh, gorgeous shots, I also had swallowtail pictures from my walk yesterday, but not in this impressive lighting as yours.

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  6. Flying Flowers- How can you not like them ?

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  7. The pix are superb.
    Thank you for the pix and the link.

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  8. I'm sure everybody tells you this but your photography has improved so much that its scary.

    These are some wonderful butterfly shots Ratty. I admire your shutterbug skill!

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  9. You got some excellent shots of the butterflies. Gorgeous

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  10. The monarch count is down this year, and I haven't seen many of them myself--which is sort of sad. I used to raise them each summer, but not so much anymore.

    I love butterflies--we get a lot in the yard. I think we notice them more now with the end of summer approaching.

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  11. Great butterfly shots! That field you found is a treasure!

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  12. Great shots Ratty! Swallowtails are among my favorite butterflies. I just love their markings.

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  13. Butterfly week is awesome! I love these photos! I will have to go over and check out the video too.

    Now if only my human could coax a few of the ones around here to come inside...

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  14. Wow..wow..these are beautiful photos, Ratty! What a great opportunity to see and photograph.

    Thanks for tip on FastStone!

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  15. Ratty, WOW! these are fantastic macros with great details not only in your bees but those flowers. Nice.

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  16. Beautiful butterflies- checking out the teasel.

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  17. I've only ever seen the yellow swallow tails before so i am glad you shared the pictures of the other colours!!

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