Although I did a posting fairly recently featuring a Black Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes), I like this image so much that I decided to give you another look at this striking species. I spotted this beautiful butterfly last Sunday at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge as it was gather nectar from some kind of thistle flower. As I mentioned in the previous posting, you can distinguish this butterfly from similar species by the orange dot on the lower wing with a black dot inside of it.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Maybe the Black Swallowtail is my favourite butterfly! Thistle’s not my favourite flower but at max enlargement it looks pretty amazing 🙂
Thanks, Liz. It is hard for me to choose a favorite butterfly, but the Black Swallowtail would certainly be high on any list that I made. As for the thistle, I like its kind of primitive look with its spiky petals and leaves.
Beautiful!
Such a beautiful butterfly!
Thanks, Janaline.
A beautiful capture and composition of the butterfly and the thistle, Mike!
Beautiful image, Mike, I love the clarity!
Thanks, Eliza. I have recently started using a couple of plug-ins from Topaz Labs to help with noise reduction and sharpness and they seem to add a little bit of pop to the images. The cool thing is that they use artificial intelligence and somehow manage to avoid the halos and artifacts that are introduced when I try to make those kind of adjustments using Photoshop itself.
Soooooo pretty!!!!….. and every an awesome capture👍👍
What an awesome capture… I meant😊
Thanks. Even in the slight garble of your initially posted comment, the word “awesome” made it pretty clear how you felt about the image. 🙂
The butterfly and purple flower makes such a beautiful photo!
Thanks. You have aptly described the reason why I felt compelled to post this image.
You are very welcome! Glad you posted it! 🙂
One of the best things about multiple postings of a specific butterfly or other insect is that it helps to imprint the image on my mind. Now, when I see a swallowtail, I’ll know to look for that black dot inside the orange dot — so helpful!
I try to vary my subjects as much as I can, but I am certainly ok in repeating them. I included the easy tip on identification because I enjoy helping people to spot the differences among species and come to appreciate better the amazing diversity that we find in nature.
And as I’ve come to realize, learning is the necessary prerequisite to knowing!
As I get a bit older, I’ve discovered that relearning is also a necessary task at times. 🙂
What a beauty ! Thanks for explaining on how to distinguish this species from others.
Love it!
We plant parsley in a box that is kept on a table with my cacti and every year these larvae eat it all. Sadly we didn’t lose a sprig this summer and haven’t seen an adult. So I am happy to see this nice shot you got, Mike.
This has been a strange year, Steve, in so many ways. I went through the first few months of summer without seeing very many butterflies, but things have picked up a bit during the last few weeks.
I love this photo, Mike, simply beautiful!
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Thanks, Mitzy. I really like those green bees and the single pink flower really made a wonderful setting for it.
What a lovely butterfly! We have several swallowtails but they are all cream with black veining.
Thanks, Jane. We are blessed to have a number of different swallowtail butterflies in my area and I like to try to find them all. 🙂
They are worth the effort!
Beautiful
Beautiful