Monday, July 07, 2008

Rayetta's Butterflies - The Butterflies Show Some Sense

This year, DY 2, has been a lousy year for the avid butterfly observer in these parts. The fact is, hardly any butterflies showed up. Perhaps the butterflies, like Druids, have Ovates. Those butterfly ovates predict ahead of time when conditions are too miserable for butterflies. Forewarned, the butterflies do not show up.

These parts during DY 2 must fall into that category. Instead of 60 species and countless individuals, like in DY 1, we have 10 species and 15 individuals during DY 2.

Yes. The butterflies, realizing DY 2 would be too hot and dry in these parts, skipped the Cow Barn. Well, almost.

The banana feeder attracts tawny emperors and hackberry emperors. Yet I weary of actually going outside. The brutal Beelzebubberriffic heat is relentless. Yet I need to monitor my banana feeder. Monitioring my banana feeder is like an urge.

Urged on, I decided to monitor the banana feeder, remotely. I can do this because I have access to Crumby's 95mm Lomo Astele telescope and access to Crumby's C 5060 wide zoom camera. All I have to do is rig up the telescope with the camera attached. Then I can watch the butterfly feeder on the camera LCD, upside down and backwards, from the air conditioned comfort of the parlor.

Of course, I can also take strange pictures of the butterfly feeder from my air conditioned vantage. The pictures are strange.

The telescope, thus employed, becomes an F10 catadioptric lens. Then I employ the Celestron 32mm kit ep to project the image, upside down and backwards to the camera.
The images are always soft and strange.

Here is an example. Tawny emperor plus a beetle, possibly Alaus zunianus.