Undamaged Beauty

I was excited to see a different butterfly yesterday, these Tiger Swollowtails are the only butterfly I've seen in our area since summer weather started weeks ago. And sadly, so many of them are pretty damaged by now. I almost skipped over this one as a blip contender, assuming that it was missing parts of it's wings like every other one I've seen lately. But I'm so glad I didn't. This one is in perfect shape! Even though it was quite flighty, a little patients on my part landed me quite a few good images in the end. I was please to see that this one turned out sharp all the way across the wings, even with the narrow DOF. It took some time, but I eventually got a few with my lens on the same plane as it's wide open wings. Fortunately I liked the composition as well, other than a small crop this is SOOC! Worth a look in large.

I found a wing portion on the ground the other day... it was so soft and felt more like fabric than anything else. I was very surprise by how it felt.