Cabbage White Butterfly, Female. Photograph, 5 x 7in. Copyright 2007, Tania Nault.
I spent the afternoon photographing butterflies, cabbage white butterflies (pieris rapae) to be exact. Cabbage whites have dark upper bodies, a black mark on the leading edge of their upper wing, a dot on their upper wing and a small black spot on the leading edge of their lower wing. The little butterfly above is a female, distinguished by two black dots on the upper wing (the males have only one dot – I know you can only see one dot in this picture, but I have another photo of this same individual showing two distinct dots). Like many of us, cabbage whites are European immigrants to North America, first introduced in the 1860s. The larvae are quite destructive eating, surprise, surprise, cabbages. Actually, they’ll eat any member of the cabbage family, which includes everything from broccoli to water cress and canola to mustard. It’s the widespread availability of these plants that account for the large numbers of the butterflies.
So, what was I doing photographing butterflies? Well, about two weeks ago I watched, sans camera, a large group of these butterflies flying, well, cavorting really, across a meadow east of the city. Suddenly, they rose, spiralling up into the air together. After they reached a height of about twenty feet, about half of the group veered back down into the grasses, while the other half continued on and then dispersed more slowly and over a larger area. It was lovely, but at the time I had no idea why they did this.
I’ve since done a bit of research and have learned that I was likely watching the female cabbage white’s version of “no thanks”. Receptive female butterflies give off a pheromone that the males use to help find them; however, the males can also find females by sight and will approach any female they see. A previously mated female will fly in an upward spiral to avoid the male and he eventually gives up and drops back to the ground to resume his search for another female. Usually, this behaviour is done by a single pair of butterflies, but in the heat of the mating season, many pairs of butterflies will perform this manoeuvre simultaneously.
Whatever the reason, it was a breathtaking sight and I thought it would make an interesting scratchboard; for both artistic and natural behaviour reasons. I have a couple other boards to finish first, but, as the saying goes, “make hay while the sun shines” and so I’m out photographing nature while the sun shines.
