Rare "Holy Grail" of butterfly shots - Dark Morph Swallowtail mating

One my my fav highlights of 2018 was witnessing this incredible site in my backyard where I rescued this pair from being stepped on in our walkway. At first I thought it was some unheard of interspecies mating of a Black Swallowtail and Tiger Swallowtail butterflies but soon discovered, thanks to google, that the black one is not a Black Swallowtail. It is a Tiger Swallowtail! A very small percentage of female only Tiger Swallowtails are dark morph.
One site said getting a photo of them mating is "the holy grail of butterfly shots".

37789214_10216216185458297_6745654503858503680_n.jpg

They mated longer than most humans, lol, so I got a bunch of amazing photos after relocating them into the bushes.
The dark morph females still have their tiger strips that are hard to see but can be seen in the light.
.dark morph tiger swallowtail mating 2018.jpg

Just incredible. Tiger Swallowtails are a sexually dimorphic species. Some have coloration that fall between light and dark morphs, and more rare are hermaphroditic gyandromorphs containing traits of both sexes.
dark morph tigerswallowtail mating 2018.jpg

Wow wow WOW
darkmorph tiger swallowtail mating 2018.jpg

We thought this was a once in a lifetime experience, but a few weeks later got to see it again!!! A few hundred feet from the first sighting, these two were on our shed!
IMG_6180.JPG

They flew off the shed into the trees. So utterly amazing.
Nature rewarding us bigtime for being a Certified Wildlife Habitat, not using poison chemicals, being a safe sanctuary zone for our insect friends :)
IMG_6205.JPG

Sort:  

This is so amazing 😍 so so beautiful, yes for saving the insectbuddies, have to resteem this, 😍

Awesome job, @celestethebest, beautiful photos; but a lot of photo buffs out here might be wondering what kind of camera you used and a couple of stats about your shots (just for info)! Of course, since they were taken last year, you might not remember the minute details...

What a great shot! Butterflies are SO beautiful. I feel like since we are in such a progressive, technological society... as a result nature gets overlooked WAY too often! Thank you for sharing this awesome post with us! 🙏🏻😊

Posted using Partiko iOS

Congratulations @celestethebest! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You made more than 10 upvotes. Your next target is to reach 50 upvotes.
You received more than 100 upvotes. Your next target is to reach 250 upvotes.

You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

To support your work, I also upvoted your post!

Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:

Are you a DrugWars early adopter? Benvenuto in famiglia!
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!

Ooh, what a treat! Definitely a reward for doing good work :)

Posted using Partiko Android

I love butterflies. I wanna be like them. Reading Rainbow time.

Amazing encounter and amazing pictures! Thank you so much for sharing this.

Posted using Partiko Android

Congratulations @celestethebest! You received a personal award!

Happy Steem Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 1 year!

You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking

Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:

Downvote challenge - Add up to 3 funny badges to your board
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!