It’s not you, it’s me

I’m sorry, Swallowtail, if my initial reaction was that of disappointment. It’s not you, it’s me. I so wanted to see a monarch butterfly today, and your flash in front of me got my hopes all aflutter.

But when I followed your flutter to the wild bergamot, I saw wings of yellow and black, not orange and black. Never mind my moment of letdown. You wear it well, that yellow, with those mimicry blue and orange dots behind your body.

Your wings are rimmed in black and dotted with oblong and rectangular yellow spots, evenly spaced. From the rim, black streaks trace inward across the yellow, fading out as if the brush didn’t make solid contact.

Then add your tail of two curved prongs, and this all makes you a tiger swallowtail. But are you an Eastern tiger or Canadian tiger? Eastern would be more normal for this area, but you could also be Canadian, which I’m leaning towards at first study; I need to see underneath your wings to be sure.

I took your photo. Though not monarchy, you, too, are beautiful on a day in August, bouncing among the ragged purple of flowering bergamot. Before giving up life soon, you will deposit eggs of the next generation on basswood and ash. The resulting mint green caterpillar is downright fascinating, feeding and growing until triggered by autumn’s longer nights and cooler temperatures to pupate into an overwintering chrysalis. Winter in chrysalis, swallowtail in spring.

I still want for the monarch. I have seen few this summer, and none in the backyard since June. I have cultivated and protected two plots of milkweeds, but no monarchs eggs, no caterpillars no pupae. I will keep looking; I once saw a monarch caterpillar in its clownish black, white and yellow stripes in late September.

Friends up the road have had monarch success. They sent photos of nine monarch chrysalis hanging in various stages of development. My friends wait for the emergence of monarchs, this year’s last generation, the butterflies that will migrate and overwinter in the forests of Mexico.

It’s August. Above the herb garden’s milkweed, and the sedum preparing to treat honeybees with its pink bloom, the mountain ash tree berries are ripening in reddish orange. The hue is so bright in late summer’s sun that a hummingbird buzzes from berry clump to berry clump, then gives up, realizing the false alarm. It hums away.

Another swallowtail, this one mostly black with rows of blue, passes through. It’s a female tiger. Then a giant swallowtail comes along, in black with strings of yellow dots forming a triangle, or a mouth, across its back. Orange sulphurs and cabbage white butterflies alight softer than feathers on flowering Indian mint.

When I was young, I chased after butterflies like all kids do. But I neither thought much about them or knew of their differences and complexities. Now I know. Swallowtails die in autumn, leaving behind overwintering chrysalis. Mourning cloaks spend winter in full form, sheltering in holes in trees or cracks in rocks. Monarchs migrate.

It’s the butterfly days of summer. I watch the butterflies. Swallowtails and sulphers, coppers and skippers, pass the time while I wait for monarchs.

Dave Greschner, retired sports/outdoors editor at the Rice Lake Chronotype, writes about nature and the outdoors, pursues nature photography, and is the author of “Soul of the Outdoors.” He can be reached at davegreschner@icloud.com.