March 16 – My Nature Journal

Spring Azure Butterfly

Celastrina ladon

Spring Azure butterflies, like this one I photographed on today’s nature walk, are truly beautiful—but seeing all of the beauty they have to offer gets tricky.

For starters, these butterflies are minute; barely the size of my thumbnail. To appreciate their beauty, a nature journaler has two options. First, you can use a telephoto lens to capture their likeness from afar and then zoom in later through the magic of modern digital technology. Or second, you can work on getting really close to one.

But getting really close to a Spring Azure can be a frustrating challenge. In my experience, azure butterflies like this Spring Azure flit around low vegetation at high speed and change direction almost constantly.

Also, they don’t land very often, or for very long. Both behaviors make tracking them through a telephoto lens while in flight and moving close to them while perched rather difficult.

But Spring Azures are worth the effort to track through the landscape.

Spring Azures are names for the brilliant blue upper—or “dorsal”—surface of their wings. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you can only see this beautiful color when the butterflies are in flight. When Spring Azures land, they hold their wings tightly folded over their abdomens, which completely hides their beautiful blue wings.

Luckily, the under—or “ventral”—surface of their wings is beautiful also, if more subtle. Their wings are pale gray to white with a sprinkling of curved black dots underneath; short, fine, white hairs fringe the wing edges.