More than Just the Regal

As you might imagine, habitat good for the Regal Fritillary is also good for lots of other winged denizens.  The butterfly tour consisted of a leisurely one mile loop through fields and meadows, with plenty of butterfly aficionados around to help you figure out what was what.

Full warning, I might mess these names up.  But I believe the butterfly above is a Spicebush Swallowtail, and I'm sure the one below is a Pipevine Swallowtail.  This one is pretty worn, but I think they are a particularly pretty butterfly.

Now we're back to the Spicebush on the thistle bloom.  It amazes me how differently the undersides of the wings can look from the tops.

It may be hard to tell, but here we have a much smaller butterfly, some sort of Copper, I think.  Maybe.

And here we have three Great Spangled Fritillaries, as identified by the person standing next to me as I took this photo.  I just noticed the small bee in front of the butterfly on the right.  It blended right in!

And some Skippers, resting on a Bee Balm, or Monarda, blossom.  

Near the end of the tour, when I thought the new kinds of butterflies were mostly behind us, I snapped this long shot of a colorful guy, and later was able to ID it as an American Lady.

So there's your whirlwind tour of the butterflies of Fort Indiantown Gap.  I heard that they do a bird tour in the spring, so that's definitely on my list now!