This little Woodland Skipper, Ochlodes sylvanoides, was found clinging to the bumper of a parked vehicle the other day. Still alive, I carefully picked it up and put it onto the back of my hand to assess if it was injured. Seemingly unharmed, it began to extend it proboscis and suck the salt from its temporary place of rest. It remained for such a length of time that I was able to extract my camera from my pocket, shift it into macro, and snap these two images before it finally took flight.
I remember the first time I heard Robert Michael Pyle speak. It was, as many of his talks usually are, at a bookshop. Intermingled with his stories, poems, reflections on life, and scientific observations was a brief comment he made regarding the magic that occurs the first time someone has a butterfly placed upon his or her nose. At the time I found this to be a wonderful and poetic image, but it was an image to which I was unable to attach an experience.
I have since added that very experience of my store of life’s memories and yes, it is indeed truly magical. Fortunately, the magic seems to remain every bit as strong with each successive moment in which a member of the Lepidoptera deigns either to light or be placed upon my shoulder, hand, or arm (I have little reason to place one on my own nose as they are very difficult to observe form that close distance). That such a delicate creature should even for two moments agree to remain perched on a creature physically capable of rendering it a near instantaneous mortal injury is easily (albeit poetically) understood as the nothing less than the very sign of acceptance by Nature, an signal of absolution that the sin of Adam itself has been erased.
Peace and good bird watching.
