Beautiful butterfly. Never seen one like it before. Thanks for sharing.

That is one beautiful butterfly. Never seen one like it either.
Barb

How beautiful!

One of my favorite butterflies! They are not attracted to flowers at all, but I've seen them in bizarre places like on dry dogfood, on the dog's dirty bed, on camellia leaves and under the tractor shed in the dry dirt.

Nell

Lynne,

Your butterfly is so beautiful!

I am also in NC -- is this a female (black form) Eastern Tiger Swallowtail?
{{gwi:738725}}

Thanks,
Cameron

Lynne, what a great capture! I too have never see a red-spotted purple.

Lynne, what a beauty, I have never seen one either. To date I've only seen a couple of Swallowtails, cabbage moths and a very small orange butterfly/moth, not sure what it is. Not too many Butterflies around this year yet.

Annette

Are these maybe fruit eating butterflies?

I don't think those come up my way. How beautiful.

Cameron, that is indeed a female tiger swallowtail. I get lots of them.

What beautiful butterflies! So nice to be able to capture it on camera.

Cameron - Accordning to my book 'Butterflies in the Carolinas' that is a Spicebush Swallowtail which is VERY similar to the Female Black Swallowtail. In fact they compare the two because of the almost identical markings. The female Black Swallowtail shows another row of yellow markings inside the blue and not near as much of the blue. I get them all confused and need to look at the book all the time to help identify them. Just flying around all the Swallowtails with black marking look the same - as do all the yellow ones.

Thank you everyone for the compliments - hubby needs the credit for the picture. He has that camera with him all the time in the garden. I don't have near the patience that he has. I just feel really blessed that we do have a pretty good buttterfly population but we do strive to give them the proper habitat and sacrifice pretty plants for food for the caterpillars.....

Lynne

GGG - didn't mean to skip your question. Again refering to my book they do indeed prefer rotting fruit, dung, carrion(whatever that is) and tree sap to flowers. They are seldom seen in flower gardens but prefer the edge of woodlands which we do have. The larva feed on Black Cherry, Wild Cherry and Willow trees....

Lynne

Beautiful picture. The coloring reminds me of a stained glass window.

Marilyn

Gorgeous!

I saw a similar one in my garden a couple days ago, visiting my zinnias, but didn't have my camera with me, alas...

I wish I was that gorgeous! :)