Melody will again share her marvelous photographs with us on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at the Westbank Library - at 12:30pm.
Our speaker for the day was Melody Lytle, a local naturalist and photographer. Melody has an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts, and a Masters in Biology, and worked for the City of Austin as a Biologist for many years. Her artistic training along with her understanding of nature combine to produce deeply satisfying artsy as well as representative field guide type pictures.
Melody made us feel at home and demonstrated right away that she’s a real Texan by stating “If it’s made out of cells I shoot it. I’ll even shoot rocks!” Plus she was dressed in camo, down to camouflage socks that she knitted herself, to help explain how she gets close to her subjects. She brought along one of her more impressive birding camera setups on a tripod: The Canon EOS 50D with a 1.6 crop factor (magnification factor), and a 500mm lens. In general she carries the 100 to 400 Zoom lens, and Melody advocates digital, has been using it herself for years, and would not dream of going back to film.
She recommended nature spots close to home as excellent locations for photographing butterflies: Zilker with its butterfly garden, and the Wildflower Center with its variety of native flowers and grasses. Practice taking photos of exotic species at the Cockerell Butterfly Museum in Houston (no tripods allowed). Or visit the annual Butterfly Festival in Mission Texas.
You don’t even have to have the latest and greatest Hi-Tech equipment before you can start taking fabulous photos. The basic point and shoot can also turn out incredible pictures. Melody highlighted several shots of her own, caught using a point and shoot, and we could see in their quality of subject matter and angle, that it is the photographer, not just the equipment that makes the picture National Geographic-worthy. For an hour, we were entranced by Texas butterflies, and many of Melody’s butterfly photographs can be seen on her websitet: http://karenmelody.com/Lep/btr_ndx.htm . Melody also treated us to photos of moths, damselflies and dragonflies, pointing out their differences and specific habitat. Dragonflies, she added, are usually easier to photograph, as they tend to stay put for longer periods of time than butterflies.
We were shown different stages of Texas butterflies’ lifecycles, as well as the male and female differences within species. One of the beauties of Melody’s presentation was her knowledge of the butterflies’ host plants at the larval stage as well as the more well known concept of planting “butterfly plants” for adult butterfly nectaring. If you are interested in attracting certain butterflies to your backyard it is important to know their host plants. (I have added host plant website links at the end)
I could never do justice to the depth of her talk, so I will just recall here just a few of her descriptive stories as an example:
The Giant Swallowtail (cresphontes) of the Family Papilionidae lays eggs on plants of the orange family (Rutaceae) and the larva resembles bark or bird droppings. Other good host plants for this butterfly from the orange family, are: Bitter orange, lime prickly ash (toothache tree – yes, the leaf will numb your mouth), and wafer ash (also known as nickels and dimes).
The Red bordered pixie (Melanis pixe) is in the Metalmark Family of Riodinidae and can be found behind the Burger King in Edinburgh, Texas! Who would’ve thought. But that is the life of a true birder and butterfly stalker. Now we know.
Brushfoots (Nymphalidae): The Zebra wing whose range is expanding northward in the last decade can often be seen nectaring on lantana. The Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanilla) and Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta Claudia) both lay eggs only on the passiflora vine. (Email Beth Plowes if you want any rooted bits of passiflora for starters) Here Melody described how the Passion Vine gets its name, which has nothing to do with the feeling of passion! “In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of this plant, particularly the numbers of its various flower parts, as symbols of the last days of Jesus Christ and especially the Crucifixion” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passiflora
The Viceroy ( Limenitis archippus) is not bad tasting or toxic to predators but looks very like, and is a mimic of, the Monarch (Danaus plexippus). The Monarch butterfly larvae feed on the noxious milkweed plant, and sequester the toxins in their bodies through to adulthood. A bird remembers the bad taste of a beakful of monarch, and stays away from both the monarch, and its mimic, the Viceroy. The monarch, the Queen and the Soldier butterflies all have similar color and markings. The viceroy host plant include the willow, poplar and cottonwood. If you put out cut up fruit, it will often attract the Tawny Emperor (Asterocampa clyton) which also likes to visit dung and hackberry tree sap.
We were flummoxed for a only a moment (!) when Melody inserted the slide of a reduced bird’s head attached to the body of a butterfly: Apparently she couldn’t resist a little creative photoshopping to keep the audience on their toes! We do hope to get Melody back again to share her real bird pictures.
Thanks Melody, for your fabulous presentation.
Suggested Plants for Butterfly Gardening –
http://www.dallasbutterflies.com/Butterfly%20Gardening/Host%20Plants%20by%20Common%20Name.htm
listed by Host Plant: http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/tnhc/entomology/butterfly/catfood.html
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