Green Hairstreak butterfly

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun May 13, 2007 11:34 pm

You don't find very many really green butterflies, but this one will do just fine. There's been no adjustment of the color -- this is straight out of the camera.

In my area of Washington State, there are two closely related species that both look very much like this. The best field mark for separating the two is supposed to be their perching behavior!

One perches on and flies from the tops of shrubs, the other from the ground. By that criterion, this individual seems most certain to be Callophrys sheridanii.

It was a bit cold and breezy, and this little fellow was fairly cooperative about sitting still while the camera approached. Again, this is arm's length macro -- the camera approached, but I didn't have to. I would rather have had some of the little plants and shadows in other places, but as with much field work, you take what you can get.

Hope you enjoy this beast.

--Rik
Technical: Canon SD700 IS camera, auto-everything. Photoshop reports f/5.6 at 1/640 sec.
Location: ridge above Bear Canyon, off Hwy 12 near Naches, WA; May 13, 2007.

cactuspic · Post by **cactuspic** » Mon May 14, 2007 6:12 am

Lovely green butterfly.

Irwin

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Mon May 14, 2007 11:06 am

That is a beautiful tropical looking green. He looks like a very happy butterfly with that smile on his face.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon May 14, 2007 1:41 pm

beetleman wrote:He looks like a very happy butterfly with that smile on his face.

Well that's interesting -- he really does!

I know the anatomy of butterfly faces so well that it took me a long time to see the smile. Now that I do see it, it's hard to not see it.

The green color is a bit of a mystery to me. I've written before about the two main types of color in butterfly wings: optical interference and pigments. The green of the Marble in that posting was pretty clearly due to pigments. But I'm suspicious that the green of this Hairstreak is partly interference. I have read that some tropical butterflies create an iridescent green by combining a yellow pigment with an interference blue. This specimen seemed unusually flashy, and I notice in this picture that the green seems to change across the wing. I have some other pictures from different viewpoints. Perhaps they'll give more clues.

--Rik

cactuspic · Post by **cactuspic** » Mon May 14, 2007 11:17 pm

Rik, could you give me a ference to your prior interference post. It sounds interesting. Thanks.

Irwin

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Tue May 15, 2007 7:47 am

cactuspic wrote:Rik, could you give me a ference to your prior interference post. It sounds interesting. Thanks.

That's at http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... .php?t=704 .

The link is actually provided in my post above, but the forum software renders the "url" tag a bit too subtly at times. I should have made it more obvious, maybe added a "u" tag to make it look like "I've written before...".

--Rik