A Few of FR's Finest...Every Day...03-15-06....Butterflies !! The "Pretty" Bugs!

DollyCali | March 15, 2006 | DollyCali

[DollyCali]

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day

Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world.

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in need; and congratulate those deserving. We strive to keep our threads entertaining, fun, and pleasing to look at, and often have guest writers contribute an essay, or a profile of another FReeper.

On Mondays please visit us to see photos of A FEW OF FR'S VETERANS AND ACTIVE MILITARY

If you have a suggestion, or an idea, or if there's a FReeper you would like to see featured, please drop one of us a note in FR mail.

We're having fun and hope you are!
~ Billie, dutchess, DollyCali GodblessUSA ~

Butterfly Facts

Did you know?

,,,that butterflies taste with their feet?

... that butterflies don't have noses? They smell with their antennae!

. . . that butterfly wings are covered with tiny scales? Different colored scales make up the pretty patterns we see.

... that butterflies are cold-blooded? The dark colors on their wings help them absorb the heat from the sun.

... that some butterflies wear camouflage? The wings of many butterflies have colors and patterns that blend in with their natural surroundings to protect them from predators.

... that butterflies can see ultraviolet light? Some scales on butterfly wings reflect light that is invisible to humans. Butterflies use these ultraviolet patterns to recognize each other.

... that a butterfly's mouth is like a drinking straw? That's because butterflies only eat liquid foods, like nectar from flowers or fruit. The mouth, called a proboscis, stays rolled up until it's time to eat.

... that a butterfly wasn't always a butterfly? Every butterfly starts as a tiny egg that hatches into a caterpillar)larvae). The caterpillar grows and grows until it's time to build a hardened shell around its body, called a chrysalis. While the caterpillar sleeps inside the (pupae) chrysalis, its body changes and grows new parts. When it comes out, it has become a butterfly, quite a different creature than a caterpillar!

Two weeks after hatching, the Monarch butterfly is 3,000 times its original birth weight. ..

The color in a butterfly's wings does not come from pigment. The color is produced prism-like by light reflected by their transparent wing scales..

The world’s smallest butterfly is the Pygmy Blue.  Its wingspan ranges between three eighths to half an inch in length. The largest butterfly in the world is the Giant Birdwing from the Solomon Islands. The female can have a wing span of over 12 inches..

Butterflies have an honed sense of smell and can detect nectar from miles away.  When they sense the blossoming of a plant they thrive on, they will travel for hours to reach it..

Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees

To A Butterfly (second) by William Wordsworth

'VE watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister's flowers;
Here rest your wings when they are weary;
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We'll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.

Written in the orchard, Town-end, Grasmere.

From Cocoon Forth a Butterfly

FROM cocoon forth a butterfly
As lady from her door
Emerged—a summer afternoon—
Repairing everywhere,

Without design, that I could trace,
Except to stray abroad
On miscellaneous enterprise
The clovers understood.

Her pretty parasol was seen
Contracting in a field
Where men made hay, then struggling hard
With an opposing cloud,

Where parties, phantom as herself,
To Nowhere seemed to go
In purposeless circumference,
As ’t were a tropic show.

And notwithstanding bee that worked,
And flower that zealous blew,
This audience of idleness
Disdained they, from the sky,

Till sundown crept, a steady tide,
And men that made the hay,
And afternoon, and butterfly,
Extinguished in its sea.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924

Another Song of a Fool

THIS great purple butterfly,
In the prison of my hands,
Has a learning in his eye
Not a poor fool understands.

Once he lived a schoolmaster
With a stark, denying look,
A string of scholars went in fear
Of his great birch and his great book.

Like the clangour of a bell,
Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet,
That is how he learnt so well
To take the roses for his meat.

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). The Wild Swans at Coole. 1919.

Butterfly Screen Saver

Kids Butterfly Site

The Butterfly Site

Greta oto is one of a number of similar transparent winged butterflies. It comes from central America, and is found from Mexico to Panama. It is quite common in its zone, but it not easy to find because of its transparent wings, which is a natural camouflage mechanism.

Greta oto is a brush-footed butterfly, and is a member of the clearwing clade; its wings are transparent. Its most common English name is glasswing, and its Spanish name is espejitos, which means "little mirrors." Indeed, the tissue between the veins of its wings looks like glass. It is one of the more abundant clearwing species in its home range. The opaque borders of its wings are dark brown sometimes tinted with red or orange, and its body is dark in color. Its wingspan is between 5.5 and 6 cm.

Adults inhabit the rainforest understory and feed on the nectar of a variety of tropical flowers. G. oto prefers to lay its eggs on plants of the tropical nightshade genus Cestrum. The silvery-gray caterpillars feed on these toxic plants and store the alkaloids in their tissues, making them distasteful to predators such as birds. They retain their toxicity in adulthood. The same alkaloids that make them poisonous also are converted into pheromones by the males, which use them to attract females..

G. oto adults also exhibit a number of interesting behaviors, such as long migrations and lekking among males..

Greta oto Scientific classification

Domain:--- Eukaryota
Kingdom: ---Animalia
Phylum:--- Arthropoda
Class---: Insecta
Order:---Lepidoptera
Suborder: ---Ditrysia
Division:--- Rhopalocera
Superfamily: ---Papilionoidea
Family: ----Nymphalidae
Subfamily: ---Ithomiinae
Genus: ---Greta
Species:--- G. oto

12-28-05 ~ Hall of Fame #14

THIS WEEK'S THREADS 03-13-06 Military Monday 03-14-06....A Finest Pet Day ~ The Doggie Dictionary

Opinions by our own 'King of Ping' Every Thursday at the Finest The guy's good, folks!

[freema]

I DID IT!!!!!!!!

[DollyCali]

The first pix is of my friend Karen & me on a iron butterfly bench. These are done by a local artist & for sale & VERY pricey!

rest of pix from inside the butterfly conservatory

>

[Issaquahking]

In regard to one of FR's very finest...


Jeff Head has a new book out! Sat down and read it in three hours flat. Great read, charges along, and doesn't get tangled up in details. Click on the book itself for more information. This event was what brought me to FR years ago, and some of my first correspondence with some of FR's finest like JustAmy!


The Stand at Klamath Falls
How rural western farmers stood up to entrenched enviromentalists and agencies of the federal government...and prevailed.

[DollyCali]

thanks for that post I... I have really appreciate the work of Jeff as well as LS.. appreciate you sharing the information with us here

[DollyCali]

good for you!!!! It is so much fun to post your first pix & then play around with that new found skill... I do love that patriotic butterfly BTW.. (snagged it)

Whoopie.

[freema]

I can't believe it was that easy! Boy, do I feel like a dingleberry LOL!

[DollyCali]

That was my thought also when I first did it... still easy to mess up. HTML is very unforgiving. One little wrong space, character & you have a mess..

On my profile page at bottom is a series of sandbox HTML links.. can learn to do lots of cutsie things!

[MEG33]

You really think they are thick leaves on the eucalyptus trees then something flutters or the sun peeks through the branches and you are in wonder..some are on the ground, some fluttering and there are so MANY! This is a nice place to be anyway as it is near the ocean..high above the beach....I was thrilled when my son and his family came at Christmas and I could take them to see this beauty...

They migrate from Canada to Mexico..Some stay in California.

http://mamba.bio.uci.edu/~pjbryant/biodiv/lepidopt/danaidae/monarchm.htm

Scroll down for examples of how thick they are.(Mexico)

[DollyCali]

Great Link! Pix & Info.. thanks Meg.. out for a bit..

[MEG33]

You did it!

[Issaquahking]

When it comes to HTML, I always drag it over to FR and through it up under someone's thread and preview it. If it is all weird, I'm the only one that knows, and get about fixxing it. Then I can drag my story around on "the clipboard" (in the copy function) to do whatever with it...like posting a new thread etc.

Not being a computer, or graphics hot shot, I stick with K.I.S.S.!

Is that "the trick" you graphics, and thread masters use???Quick! gimme a flashlight so I quit stumbing around here, chasing ghosts....

[DollyCali]

I practice the same way you do.. I go to an OLD thread usually of mine..but Billie for one does her previewing in a way I have yet been able to master. With notepad & saving text in HTML format

The larger threads are very complex & much more prone to mess ups due to the nature of the beast. My first big thread I learned there was a BIG defense in posting a thread & a post at an existing thread.

I can have something preview great in a post preview but when I go to post a thread it is chaos..... one little center, block quote, p, br out of place. sometimes easy to find & sometimes not! HTML is always unforgiving but seems to double the terror in a thread.

I now & then make the mistake of practicing & forgetting to put my name on it.. IF you perchance post it, can quickly get mods to pull BUT you have someone with a strange post in their pings!

[MEG33]

Monarch Butterfly,Texas A&M site

[MEG33]

I do all my graphics in preview like that,correct, recorrect.....If I like it I post it..or save it to notebook file for later..I am always changing, tweaking what I thought was great the first time I finished it though! I am 3 months into posting graphics and doing frames(tables)...so I am no expert.

[freema]

'That was my thought also when I first did it... still easy to mess up. HTML is very unforgiving. One little wrong space, character & you have a mess..'

Yeah, and I can't hardly bear reading instructions on that stuff. LOL!

[freema]

I'm so tickled!!

[freema]

More coffee!

[GodBlessUSA]

This must be incredible. What a thrill to see them all. I have to become familiar with what butterflies cocoons and caterpillars look like, so I don't disturb them in the garden.

[GodBlessUSA]

So beautiful they are.
I have to go read the info. :)

[DollyCali]

you do great work & one would never guess you were such a novice.. Billie's good teaching & your diligent practice!

Delay in leaving so SHOULD punch out some domestic projects. but will I ?

Ha!