Well everyone, we have all survived our second hurricane in two weeks. For us, up in north central Florida, Hurricane Milton wasn’t too bad. At my house, we never even lost power, although we were certainly prepared to. The people in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and even Orlando weren’t quite so lucky. Milton was an incredibly destructive storm and rebuilding will be a long road for many people. My heart goes out to them and the people who are still in the process of recovering from Hurricane Helene. I also feel very fortunate to have come through both of them pretty much unscathed.

Shortly before Hurricane Helene, my Mom and I took a short hike in the Crystal River Wildlife Refuge. It’s part of the Florida Birding Trail, but we didn’t see any birds. However, there were plenty of butterflies including a couple of new species for me. I will be presenting those at a later date, but tonight I wanted everyone to see one of my favorite swallowtail butterflies, the tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). Here in central Florida, they can be seen as soon as the temperature starts warming up in the spring until the first frost of fall. In south Florida they are on the wing pretty much all year round. I seem to see more of them in the fall, but I’m not sure if that is true throughout Florida or not. Like most swallowtails, tiger swallowtail usually flap their wings while they feed, so they are nearly always in motion, which makes photographing them more difficult than some butterflies. For this shot I was trying to catch the butterfly with its wings open, so I chose a fast shutter speed and shot several bursts. This shot was the one that I liked best, and was pretty much what I was hoping for. I really wanted to be able to admire those gorgeous yellow wings with the black border and stripes. The butterfly also looks really sharp in association with the beautiful purple flowers.