Florida Gardening: S FL Galloping Gardeners 2007-10-22, 1 by artcons

artcons wrote:
G'morn all,
Last night I solved a minor puzzlement about the butterflies roosting on my firebush. I had a picture of this further up http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4146184 I had dragged Deb out in the yard to see the roosting butterflies.

There were three of them on the same branch as I had seen them on for the past few mornings. However this evening three more were also trying to get on the branch. Then it hit me square in the head...they were trying to get on a dead branch. They wouldn't land on a live branch, just this dead one.

This morning I confirmed what I had seen the night before only this morning there were four of them crammed on a tiny piece of dead branch. Some time today I will get out there and attach a few dead branches I keep lying around to hold up plants in pots, to the firebush in the vicinity of the other branch and see what happens tonight.
BTW, it appears I can get a better picture at night, but I might have to zoom in to do it. I don't want to scare them off and have them be afraid to roost there due to intruders.

Next, I finally got a picture of the subject of all of this nonsence in the first place. You probably don't remember, but I was originally out there in the early morning to get a picture of the Butterfly Hummingbird Moth. Well this morning on my second walkabout there was one feeding on the Porterweed where it usually feeds here.

I took a dozen shots of this critter, that in itself a difficult task as the critter is so small and moves so fast I can't spot it in the rear viewer or even in the eyepiece viewfinder .

A SLR would have made the task easier but we have what we have so it's trial and error, mostly error. At any rate, here is the Butterfly Hummingbird Moth.

Art
edited in. It is a Hummingbird Moth, not Butterfly Hummingbird Moth.

This message was edited Nov 2, 2007 11:11 AM