Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Clouded Sulphur Butterfly: Male and Female

 I luckily came upon several Clouded Sulphur Butterflies yesterday in Pouch Cove. I parked and waiting for opportunities to photograph them.
 What I have here is a male and female. The mail is supposed to have a richer color, but the female pictured on the left with yellow spots in the border seems to be more yellow. The female appears to be larger, but I found no mention of sizing in the number of websites I visited.
 Believe it or not, it is really difficult to find straight-forward information about butterflies. There is an inconsistency in the information that is posted and the photos often include species misnamed. To be "picky," I found the presentation of info not that lay-user-friendly.
 Not really wanting to read too deeply into this subject, it would be nice to have clear, accurate information without having to wade through a lot of junk.
 It is not easy to capture butterflies in flight. This was my best effort. I did learn it is  relatively uncommon for this butterfly to land with its wings spread. They did that a lot yesterday. That may be due to the mating that was going on.
 Male Clouded Sulphur
The underside of the wing has a white double spot encircled by pink. This appears to coincide with the orange spot on the top side of the wings. These markings are present on both the female and male.
Here's an example of the female with spread wings and the male with closed wings.
 Another identifier of the male is the darker circle around the white spot on the fore wing which the butterfly in the back of this image has.

I came across another cluster of butterflies yesterday that I will share later.

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