Last weekend I spent some time hiking around Watermelon Pond before visiting with my friend Mary, who lives there. The area was pretty wet thanks to the rain that we got from tropical storm Debby. With the water levels high, the boaters and air boaters were out in numbers, so the wildlife was pretty sparse, but the insect life and flowers more than made up for it. One area that I really enjoyed was a patch of wetland wildflowers that were blooming and were full of butterflies. There were several types present, but the vast majority were these giant swallowtails (Papilio cresphontes). They were very busy flitting about from flower cluster to flower cluster. They’re one of the largest swallowtail butterflies that we have in this area, and they were really into the flowers and didn’t pay me and my camera much attention. Those two assets made them pretty easy to photograph, but they also tend to flap their wings continuously, even while feeding, so that makes it a bit tougher. I actually really enjoyed not only watching them feed and interact with each other, but also experimenting with different shutter speeds and apertures. As I stated earlier, there were quite a few insects out, but these guys were definitely the most impressive.