Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies (Papilio glaucas) here are frantic to get to their favorite source of nectar before the flowers whither. Beauty Bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) blooms are peaking here and, yesterday, this gorgeous female Tiger seemed to spend all morning trying to drink this one bush dry.
The male Tiger always is yellow with black “tiger stripes" on each fore wing. The female yellow morph is similar, but with a necklace of blue jewels along the hind wing. The female also can be almost completely black.
Tigers sometimes do an excited dance as they land on the blooms, especially the small Beauty Bush flowers. This activity apparently is because, as with all butterflies, Tigers smell and taste with chemical sensors on their antennae and feet.
During its brief passage as a butterfly, the individual insect will mate and subsist on nectar and water. This existence as a winged insect will last only three or four weeks, but it already will have led an interesting and dangerous life as an egg, caterpillar, and larva. (Brooklin, Maine)