- Bang

Thanks for the info on the butterflies. I’ll tuck that in my cap for future use

By the way, if you’re looking for a comment you made in the past here, feel free to email me and let me know what you’re looking for as I don’t think the search engine I have searches comments — just the posts themselves.

I’m replying to an old post so you may not even get this (does your blog software alert you to every new comment, no matter what post it’s attached to?). I post here very rarely and was perusing your archives, searching for some comments I had made some time ago. Anyway, I’m a chemist, and therefore a science geek, and something of an amateur entomologist as well. This means that, upon seeing these very stunning photographs of the butterfly from your 7/27/05 post, I had to spend the past 45 minutes trying to identify this specimen. Yeah, it’s that bad with me.

So what did I find out, you ask? Well, I think your little friend is a Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis). They’re supposed to be quite common throughout North Carolina. This page is the main reference I used for identification. There is the inevitable minor variation in wing coloration and patterning, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got it nailed…I think. Butterfly identification is a dicey proposition, at best. Many a fine lepidopterist has done himself in by the fumes of his own killing jar, over the shame of having misidentified some specimen and then publishing his blunder in the peer-reviewed literature. Science is an ugly business sometimes.

So now, next time this little fella stops by during a backyard barbecue and your friends say, “Oooh, what a pretty butterfly!” You can glance over casually as you flip another burger and reply nonchalantly, “Oh yeah…a Red-spotted Purple.” And they’ll stare at you and exclaim, “She blogs, she does talk radio, she knows the names of all the woodland creatures…Great Scot, is there anything this woman can’t do?!?”

Love your blog. Feel free to use me as your go-to guy on any questions about strange insects and spiders you can’t identify. It’s the least I can do!

Sloan

(Note from ST: I am having to recreate this comment – it was deleted by mistake via a spam killer plugin that I had not yet configured. Thankfully I have the email notification that is sent to me everytime a comment is submitted for approval and was able to go off of that to recreate this comment. Sorry about that, Lorica – it shouldn’t happen again. I hope to get this whole spam dilemma sorted this weekend when I tinker around with my new spam killer. Thank you for your compliment! –ST).