Southern Pink Moth

I found this beautiful tiny bug in my apartment:

Gray Hairstreak

Morning

Neon sky

Scrub Jay awaiting peanuts

Moon and Venus (the tiny pixel at lower left)

Nesting season is over, but bluebirds still use these boxes for shelter

White beauty

Reflection

Funereal Duskywing

Salt marsh moth

I found this adorable fuzzy moth on the sidewalk, alive but lethargic from the damp drizzle, and lifted it up onto a railing where it wouldn't get stepped on.

Giant Swallowtail

When I found this butterfly, it was completely motionless. Closer inspection, however, showed that it was alive though torpid in the chilly morning. I let it crawl onto my finger, and my mammalian body heat must have given it a jump-start, because it fluttered out of sight.

Jewel caterpillar

This creature is proof that the ocean doesn't have a monopoly on bizarre transparent animals:

Photo credit Daniel Janzen, via Scientific American.

Fallen moth

This seems to be an underwing moth, possibly Catocala benjamini.

Prehistoric iridescence

Although the original colors of the fossil moths were not preserved, the researchers were able to reconstruct them because the tiny color-producing patterns in the moth scales were intact. "The level of detail preserved in the scales of the fossil moths is just spectacular", said McNamara. The fossil moths owe their color to a stack of layers inside the scales. These layers form a fossil multilayer reflector, which usually produces iridescent colour that changes depending on viewing angle. But other details of the fossil scales suppressed this effect, producing instead muted colors. "The moths basically wanted to appear the same colour from different angles – they didn't want flashy iridescence" said McNamara.

Full story at Physorg.

Also, iridescence in animals may go back as far as the Cambrian era:

At different times of day and different viewing angles, the marine creatures [Wiwaxia, Canadia, and Marella] would have glowed blue, red, yellow, or green. Since the evolution of these worms coincides with the first appearance in the fossil record of animals with eyes, such as trilobites, the twinkling colors may have warned predators to avoid these armored, and perhaps unpalatable, animals.

When I was a child, the color of prehistoric animals was presented as an unknowable mystery. But now, discoveries like these are commonplace-- but no less wonderful for it.  

Butterfly egg

 David Millard,Vanessa atalanta (Red admiral butterfly) egg in Urtica dioica (Stinging nettle) trichomes (10X)

From Nikon Small World. 

Mourning Cloak

Monarch's wing

No butterflies were harmed in the making of this photo-- I found that detached wing on the sidewalk about two years ago, and preserved it in the plastic box seen here.

Prodryas

19th century engraving of Prodryas persephone, a fossil butterfly 

A version of this image appears in a book with the delightfully Victorian title Frail Children of the Air. Ironic, then, that this "child of the air" has become anything but frail in death, having been pressed and preserved in stone. On the original fossil, one can even see ghostly hints of veins, scales, and patterns on its wings.

Woodland Skipper