The more time I spend out in nature, the more incredible things I see and experience. One of the things that impresses me the most is how resilient nature is. I’ve seen new plants springing up out of the ground within days after an area has been devastated by wildfire. I’ve seen birds thrive even after loosing a leg or an eye. I’ve seen armadillos and possums “come back to life” after playing dead to throw off a predator. One of the most resilient groups of all, though, are the insects. A couple years ago I posted about a lady bug that I found with a damaged wing coverlet. I was very impressed when it opened up the coverlets to expose perfect wings and take flight. This red spotted purple butterfly (Limenitis arthemis astyanax) fluttered through the area where I was birding. It circled, turned, danced, and floated all seemingly quite normally. It wasn’t until it landed that I realized that over half of the left hind wing was missing. Even then I didn’t realize the full extent of the injury until I looked at the images on my computer. This is far from the first time that I have seen a butterfly with pretty seriously damaged wing(s) behaving and flying quite normally. I often think that people can learn a lot from nature including resilience.