A Visit from a Dark Angel: Giant Swallowtail

It was one of the biggest butterflies I've ever seen in my life. We were at home, and my husband told me to go outside and see. And so I did. With camera, of course. And boy, was I glad I went!

There, at the back of the Meadow, was a giant swallowtail butterfly, Papilio cresphontes. A friend who is an expert on such things told me that this is a "species of concern" in Pennsylvania; he only sees about one a year. So it was a very special visitor indeed.

It had a unique set of markings: very dark wings, with distinctive yellow spots arranged in one bold row across its back, and another row along the bottom edge of each rear wing. It is much bigger, and very different looking, than our tiger swallowtails, each very beautiful in its own right.

The butterfly was very friendly, and it stayed long enough for me to get more than a dozen decent photos of it. It seemed to want to linger at the back of Gremlin's Meadow, where, alas, there is a very small, new-made grave.

Could this very special visitor be a winged angel, arriving to carry the gentle - and now free - spirit of one of our Bunzinis to Heaven? Well . . . why not?

The soundtrack: Jane Siberry and KD Lang, Calling All Angels.

P.S. Just LOOK at that curly-twirly proboscis! :-)