Follow the leader
Paired swallowtails
The meadow across the street may be doomed to be destroyed by developers, but until the heavy equipment turns a grassland into house lots, I'm bound and determined to keep walking the field and chronicling its natural history. The Sweet Vernal and Orchard grasses are heading out, and the Buttercups are in shiny yellow bloom. While I was searching through the plants for the first dragonflies, I spotted a pair of Spicebush Swallowtails flying in close formation. The two insects weren't in tandem, but they clearly had meeting and mating in mind. Try as they might, however, they never quite succeeded in coupling. I'm a romantic at heart, so I hoped these efforts would pay off. And I hoped she decided to lay her eggs in a more protected spot.