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A Common Buckeye!!!

<<seriously excited shrieking>>

This butterfly has been on my wish list for years! I mean YEARS!!! I've never even SEEN one before!

(*they're supposed to be common - it's literally in the name - but they've felt like the white whale of butterflies for me lol.)

It was gone so fast. One quick stop & then it zoomed away. I was only able to get a few mediocre shots, but OMG! A Common Buckeye! FINALLY!!!

My heart is still pounding! 😂

#butterfly #Lepidoptera #TexasGarden #NaturePhotography

A Common Buckeye on pink yarrow flowers. Further detail: it is a brown butterfly with very large, distinctive "eyespots" on the wings. There are also two rectangular orange patches on the leading edge of the forewings & additional orange and white coloration around the dark eyespots. The yarrow flowers are pink with white centers. They're tiny flowers that bloom in dense clusters. They appear a bit washed out in this photo due to very strong afternoon sunlight.
A slightly different angle of the same Common Buckeye on pink yarrow flowers. This is a better shot of the dorsal side with the wings spread wide, although slightly off kilter because I had a bad angle. But it shows the full extent of the exquisite patterning of the wings (see first photo for a description). The left and right sides are a perfect mirror image of one another.
#naturephotography #butterfly #lepidoptera #texasgarden
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